Kage Baker Quotes

72 Sourced Quotes

You have to be pretty damned hot and thirsty to enjoy a soy-milk smoothie, but they were, so it was okay.

Kage Baker
Edward holds up a hand for silence. If you please, Captain: he's thinking. Let us savor the exquisite rarity of the moment.

Kage Baker
Sight-seeing is the art of disappointment, I quoted.

Kage Baker
Religion has its place, certainly, in reinforcing ethical behavior amongst the masses, but any sufficiently enlightened secular laws will have the same effect. After all, most of the creeds of the world have essentially the same purpose, have they not? To enjoin men to be what we call moral, which is to say civilized. A civilized man obey the rule of law, he acknowledges that he must not injure his neighbors, and if injured by them, he must appeal to law for satisfaction rather than indulge in burning their houses over their heads as they sleep. Civilization is the ideal for which we strive, with so little perceptible success; yet we do succeed, in inches and over years.

Kage Baker
Very shortly the temple was once again a wonder of the world, and the Ephesian Church settled down to a long reign marked only by the usual bitter quarrels, heresies, and internal dissent through which all major faiths struggle.
Any religion begins in a moment of transforming truth. That moment quickly shatters into falsehood and shame and stagecraft, bitter comedy, sometimes murder. Thieves catch hold of any chance for power. The early years of a faith are best not too closely examined by its faithful.

Kage Baker
They find us outlandish, Lopez admitted. Extravagant. Eclectic. Unfathomable.

Kage Baker
Consigned to everlasting fire, said Nicholas in a faint voice. He had gone white as chalk.
No, you medieval imbecile! Edward clenched his fists. You still have no grasp of the truth, have you? Leave your angels and devils in the trash of history, where they belong.

Kage Baker
Ah, the immortal ocean.
Consider the instructive metaphor: every conceivable terror dwells in her depths; she receives all wreckage, refuse, corruption of every kind, she pulls down into her depths human calamity indescribable; but none of this is any consideration to the sea. Let the screaming mortal passengers fight for room in the lifeboats, as the wreck belches flame and settles below the extinguishing wave; next morning she'll still be beautiful and serene, her combers no less white, her distances as blue, her seabirds no less graceful as they wheel in the pure air. What perfection, to be so heartless. An inspiration to any lesser immortal.

Kage Baker
The awful bottom line, of course, is that if you're going to rule the world, you have to have absolute power, and everybody knows what absolute power does.

Kage Baker
Do you remember that terrible moment, señors, when the self-righteousness of your youth died? When all the stern warnings of your elders, ignored until the consequences abruptly came crashing down on your head, made you see in a flash that the warnings hadn't been unfair or mean-spirited or blind, they'd been right? All along your elders had been trying to tell you about the black joke that is life, trying to help you and save you from pain. But you insisted on running straight into the trap, mocking them as you ran, to the agony that was irreversible and permanent, with no one to blame, finally, but yourself.
It's not good to see yourself in the mirror then.

Kage Baker
There, Joseph said. There's your answer.
It's not an answer, little man. It's many, many more questions.

Kage Baker
And when there is peace at last, and when men are no longer distracted by the ravages of war and crime, then the real work begins. Mankind has grasped at science and invention to improve his lot; when he truly understands that he can wield those tools to improve himself, he will lay the cornerstone of the earthly paradise, Edward said. What might not science achieve, in a world where a nation's resources weren't continually drained by strife?

Kage Baker
Funny thing about those Middle Ages, said Joseph. They just keep coming back. Mortals keep thinking they're in Modern Times, you know, they get all this neat technology and pass all these humanitarian laws, and then something happens: there's an economic crisis, or science makes some discovery people can't deal with. And boom, people go right back to burning Jews and selling pieces of the true Cross. Don't you ever make the mistake of thinking that mortals want to live in a golden age. They hate thinking.

Kage Baker
It didn't matter that they were terrible at being parents; they were also very rich, which meant they could pay other people to love Alec.

Kage Baker
The leaf that spreads in the sunlight is the only holiness there is. I haven't found holiness in the faiths of mortals, nor in their music, nor in their dreams: it's out in the open field, with the green rows looking at the sky. I don't know what it is, this holiness: but it's there, and it looks at the sky.

Kage Baker
Doubtless he was going to start bragging about being a god. It went with the profile of this sort of lunatic.

Kage Baker
Justice doesn't exist! We did worse things. Nobody deserves to go to that place, Alec said. Anyway, weren't you Christian types supposed to forgive everybody?
I will shed no tears for that bastard's damnation, said Nicholas stonily.
No wonder nobody's left that believes in your stupid religion, said Alec.

Kage Baker
Like children, they're bored by complicated things. More than bored: they feel threatened. Give a child mashed potatoes and butter, and he's happy. He doesn't want to try the rich sauce with capers, in fact he'll cry if he's forced to taste it. You see what I mean?
But, listen, Joseph. A child is easy to control. Keep him happy, and he'll believe what he's told to believe.

Kage Baker
Alec is beautiful, said Jill, bending down to kiss him.
Like a mushroom cloud! scoffed Balkister.

Kage Baker
Edward raises the pointer and places its tip against Alec's forehead. What's the use of having a library in there if you won't open the books, boy? What's the good of augmented intelligence if you won't use it?

Kage Baker
Oh, that's childish, says Nicholas in disgust.
Well, so what? says Alec. We happen to be children.

Kage Baker
The same intact culture that made them good businessmen also made many of them lousy parents.

Kage Baker
Rutherford was a historian, after all, and secretly enjoyed it when the truth did injury to modern sensibilities.

Kage Baker
Ah, Los Angeles. One disaster after another, always has been.

Kage Baker
It was growing dusk, the blue hour when solid things take on a certain transparency and phantoms become palpable.

Kage Baker
A missionary may persuade a painted savage to worship a cross rather than an idol; but he will not make laws that send that savage's children to school, where they might learn to make the desert they inhabit another Eden by means of the advanced sciences. He may persuade his flock to love one another for his God's sake, but he'll invariably urge them to slaughter any neighboring tribe that still worships stone idols. This is the failure of religion as a force for the common welfare.

Kage Baker
So, um... are you alone out here?
I was, she said.

Kage Baker
I may cut my coat to follow fashion, sir, but not my conscience.

Kage Baker
The truth is, Homo sapiens sapiens is pretty much the same the world over, regardless of skin color or technological development. Racists and provincial types have problems with this fact, but it is a fact. All mortals have the same potential, and only chance determines who's playing a spinet or who's clubbing dinner to death with a big rock. And, you know what? Mortals adapt to the environment in which they're placed. Switch babies between savages and technologicals, and nobody notices! I know, because I've seen it done. I've seen the son of a club-carrying cave dweller fuming because his accounting software wasn't quite adequate for his needs. All humans have the same brain package.

Kage Baker
He saw in memory Mendoza's face, her black eyes sad as she downloaded a chapter on revolutions.
Here you go. Great heroes and the things they wrecked. Always easier to destroy something than to create something. It's harder to plant a garden than to blow up a building, and undoubtedly more boring, but you just might need to do it one day, eh?

Kage Baker