Kage Baker - Mortals Quotes

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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
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
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
It takes thousands of them to create an archive of human wisdom; only one to set a torch to it. Wouldn't you have to say, then, that the work of the librarians is more typical of mortal behavior than the work of the arsonist?

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
No nation, creed, or race was any better or worse than another; all were flawed, all were equally doomed to suffering, mostly because they couldn't see that they were all alike. Mortals might have been contemptible, true, but not evil entirely. They did enjoy killing one another and frequently came up with ingenious excuses for doing so on a large scale—religions, economic theories, ethnic pride—but we couldn't condemn them for it, as it was in their moral natures and they were too stupid to know any better.

Kage Baker
Sex, Kiu said thoughtfully. And Fear. Get that big old devil behind them with a stick, and my radiant beauty in front of them, and they'll run right off a cliff, if I ask.
I'm a firm believer in Guilt, personally, said Labienus.
Works well on individuals, Kiu conceded.
Nothing like it for subtle motivation. Plant it deeply enough into a mortal's psyche and it twists them endlessly. Labienus sighed. Get it in there young enough and it'll do all your work for you. You'll have only to prod the mortal along with a suggestion now and then.

Kage Baker
This is insane, she said. Why would mortals make it so difficult to get two little glasses of white wine?
Human nature, my love. Edward grinned and set his knee against hers under the tablecloth. The desire of a few to dictate morality to the whole. And why do the masses submit willingly? Apathy. Or, perhaps, the opportunity to experience the thrill of the forbidden!

Kage Baker
Smashing things is the violent way stupid mortal monkeys solve their problems.

Kage Baker