Jack McDevitt - Life Quotes

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Fiction is unlike reality because it has an end, a conclusion, which allows the characters to stroll happily, or perhaps simply more wisely, out through the climax into the epilogue. But life is a tapestry. It has no satisfactory end. There are simply periods of acceleration and delay, victory and frustration, seasoned with periodic jolts of reality.

Jack McDevitt
It's so old, she said, that, had life developed, it would be billions of years older than we are. Imagine what such a civilization might be like.
Dead, thought MacAllister. That's what it would be like. The fact that no technologically advanced species had been found in all these years made it pretty clear that the damned things have no staying power. You could see it at home, where, starting with the Cold War, there'd already been a few close calls.
It explained the Fermi Paradox. Nobody visits us because they blow themselves up before they get that far.

Jack McDevitt
Sometimes, he said, I think life is just one long series of blown opportunities.

Jack McDevitt
Embrace your life, find what it is that you love, and pursue it with all your soul. For if you do not, when you come to die, you will find that you have not lived.

Jack McDevitt
What would happen is that people like Geroge and Alyx would grow old and die chasing a dream. Although there were probably worse things to do with one's life.

Jack McDevitt
Mac continued to write scathing commentary on assorted hypocrisies in high places and low, without which hypocrisies, he cheerfully conceded, civilized life would be impossible.

Jack McDevitt
Life is a walk in the fog. Most people don't know that. They're fooled by the sunlight into thinking they can see what's ahead. But it's the reason they are forever getting lost or falling into ditches or committing matrimony.

Jack McDevitt