Best 35 quotes of Charlie Jane Anders on MyQuotes

Earlier, if you had a piece of technology, anyone could theoretically take it apart and put it back together again, and understand how it works. Some people would do that with the technology that they owned. It's not as easy to do that today. Most users wouldn't even think to do anything like that.

Genres are like the surface of the ocean. There are waves and things moving, but you don't instantly see all the reefs and ecosystems that's happening beneath the surface.

If you're a writer, you don't serve genres. Genres serve you. Like, if you're writing a science fiction story set on a spaceship, you don't have to have someone thrown out an airlock.

I think that technology is much more mysterious to the people using it than, say, the automobile was. This isn't an original observation, but a lot of the smart devices people rely on now really do feel like magic to a lot of us.

Live every day as if you've come back in time from a dystopian future to try and prevent everything from breaking.

On the one hand, technology is more mysterious. On the other hand, we're more aware of its limitations. Every time I watch Star Trek, I'm highly aware of magical everything is: the holodeck, the warp drive. It's possible that with wormholes we might eventually be able to do something like that. But the laws of physics are pretty unforgiving.

People really don't understand the technology they're using. It's been talked about a lot. Apple products in particular are designed in such a way that's harder to get in and understand what processes are going on.

Storytelling is more like a skin. You start with the outermost layer, what it's going to look like, then you kind of get deeper into it. What's actually going on beneath the surface is not really dictated by or related to the surface genre. It's more about what's going to happen between the characters and what's taking place in the story.

There are no requirements when you're using a particular genre. It's not like the genre is your boss and you have to do what it says. You can make use of the genre any way you want to, as long as you can make it work.

There's been a greater awareness among people, especially geeks, that the laws of physics don't allow that much wiggle room in terms of things like faster-than-light travel, time travel, sending people to other planets. It's harder than we were aware a few decades ago. I think there used to be this widespread imagination, this idea that we'd eventually just hop in a rocket and go to Mars.

Actually, Laurence is hardly ever home; this is the first I’ve seen him in weeks. Which can only mean one thing: Red Dwarf marathon.

All this time as a mad scientist why didn't he have a shrink ray or stun gun in his closet somewhere? He had been wasting his life.

And she felt like they, the two of them, right here, right now, could make something that defied tragedy.

As Dorothy J. Heydt famously said, the eight deadliest words for any work of fiction are 'I don't care what happens to these people.

A society that has to burn witches to hold itself together is a society that has already failed, and just doesn't know it yet.

Booze really was medicinal, after a near-death experience. Holding a drink in both hands and letting it corrode the topmost layer of his mouth and throat, Laurence felt a spiritual relationship with Bushmills.

Do you think the occasional witch burning helps to weld society together?

He went to make coffee. Because when you have just heard about the possible transformation of the human race into feral monsters you need to be doing something with your hands and creating something hot and comforting for another person.

I don't actually think that ethics are derived from principles. At all." Patricia scooted a little closer again and touched his arm with a few cool fingertips. "I think that the most basic thing of ethics is being aware of how your actions affect others, and having an awareness of what they want and how they feel. And that's always going to depend on who you're dealing with.

I hope it's the good kind of dilemma," Reginald broke Patricia's reverie. "Whatever one you're on the horns of." ... "I was just thinking," she said. "There are so many scary problems in the world. Like, I was just reading that we could be seeing the last of the bees in North America soon. And if that happened, food webs would just collapse, and tons more people would starve. But suppose you had the power to change things? You still might not be able to fix anything, because every time you solve a problem you'd create another problem. And maybe all these plagues and droughts are nature's way of striking a balance. We humans don't have any natural predators left, so nature has to find another way to handle us." ... "I am, as you know, a fan of nature," said Reginald. "And yet, nature doesn't 'find ways' to do anything. Nature has no opinion, no agenda. Nature provides a playing field, a not particularly level one, on which we compete with all creatures great and small. It's more that nature's playing field is full of traps.

I think that the most basic thing of ethics is being aware of how your actions affect others, and having an awareness of what they want and how they feel.

Loneliness was a full-body sensation, an anti-exhilaration, from his core outward.

Love was the most susceptible to random failure of all human enterprises.

Maybe she would have done more good as a playwright than as a doctor, after all — clichés were like plaque in the arteries of the imagination, they clogged the sense of what was possible. Maybe if enough people had worked to demolish clichés, the world wouldn't have ended.

My biggest fear about the apocalypse isn't being eaten by cannibals - it's the fact that in every other postapocalyptic movie you see someone with an acoustic guitar by the campfire. I can't stand acoustic guitar music. I'd rather listen to dubtrash.

...no matter what you do, people are going to expect you to be someone you're not. But if you're clever and lucky and work your butt off, then you get to be surrounded by people who expect you to be the person you wish you were.

Part of how they make you obey is by making obedience seem peaceful, while resistance is violence. But really, either choice is about violence, one way or another.

Self-awareness paradoxically requires an awareness of the other.

The bookstore had no musty ‘old books’ smell, and instead it had a nice oaky aroma, similar to the way Laurence imagined the whiskey casks would be before you put Scotch into them for ageing. This was a place where you would age well.

The sun still hadn't risen. Maybe it never would. Maybe the sky was sick of these endless costume changes: Casting off cloak after cloak, but never revealing what it wore under all those cloaks.

What was worse, being crazy or being evil?

When it comes to love triangles and duels to the death, you should always cheat. - Fairy Werewolf vs. Zombie Vampire

When the world turns chaotic, we must be the better part of chaos.

Why would anybody be a Satanist, anyway? I don’t get it. You can’t believe in Satan without believing in God, and then you’re just picking the wrong side in a big mythic battle thing.

You turned your guilt into resentment, because that seems easier to face. You won't move on until you turn it back into guilt, and then into forgiveness for yourself.