Allah protect us,' Bold said politely. Then, in Arabic, 'In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate.' In his years in Femur's army he had learned to be as much a Muslim as anyone. The Buddha did not mind what you said to be polite.

— Kim Stanley Robinson

All the great moments of history have taken place inside people’s heads.

— Kim Stanley Robinson

All the repetitions in the pattern were superficial; the moment was always new. It had to be lived, and then the next moment embraced as it arrived.

— Kim Stanley Robinson

And in this curious state I had the realization, at the moment of seeing that stranger there, that I was a person like everybody else. That I was known by my actions and words, that my internal universe was unavailable for inspection by others. They didn't know. They didn't know, because I never told them.

— Kim Stanley Robinson

And Sarah still looked like the sexiest librarian on earth, which is as those of you who frequent libraries know means very sexy indeed, but with that added owlish touch that drives you wild.

— Kim Stanley Robinson

A thug. In peacetime Fitch would be hanging around a pool table giving the cops trouble. He was perfect for war. Gibbets had chosen his men well - most of them, anyway. Moving back past Haddock January stopped to stare at the group of men in the navigation cabin. They joked, drank coffee. They were all a bit like Fitch: young toughs, capable and thoughtless. Furthermore, they're having a good time, an adventure. That was January's dominant impression of his companions in the 509th; despite all the bitching and the occasional moments of overmastering fear, they were having a good time. His mind spun forward, and he saw what these young men would grow up to be like as clearly as if they stood before him in businessmen's suits, prosperous and balding. They would be tough and capable and thoughtless, and as the years passed and the great war receded in time they would look back on it with ever-increasing nostalgia, for they would be the survivors and not the dead. Every year of this war would feel like ten in their memories, so that the war would always remain the central experience of their lives - a time when history lay palpable in their hands, when each of their daily acts affected it, when moral issues were simple, and others told them what to do - so that as more years passed and the survivors aged, bodies falling apart, lives in one rut or another, they would unconsciously push harder and harder to thrust the world into war again, thinking somewhere inside themselves that if they could only return to world war then they would magically be again as they were in the last one - young, and free, and happy. And by that time they would hold the positions of power, they would be capable of doing it.

— Kim Stanley Robinson

Because life is robust, Because life is bigger than equations, stronger than money, stronger than guns and poison and bad zoning policy, stronger than capitalism, Because Mother Nature bats last, and Mother Ocean is strong, and we live inside our mothers forever, and Life is tenacious, and you can never kill it, you can never buy it, So Life is going to dive into your dark pools, Life is going to explode the enclosures and bring back the commons, O you dark pools of money and law and latitudinal stupidity, you oversimple algorithms of greed, you desperate simpletons hoping for a story you can understand, Hoping for safety, hoping for cessation of uncertainty, hoping for ownership of volatility, O you poor fearful jerks, Life! Life! Life! Life is going to kick your ass.

— Kim Stanley Robinson

Bold didn’t know what he felt, it changed minute by minute.

— Kim Stanley Robinson

Childhood isn't just those years. It's also the opinions you form about them afterward. That's why our childhoods are so long.

— Kim Stanley Robinson

Desire is life trying to continue to be life. All living things desire, bacteria feel desire. Life is wanting.

— Kim Stanley Robinson