Lisa Mason

Lisa Mason (born 1953) is an American writer of science fiction, fantasy, and urban fantasy.

Quotes

Summer of Love (1994)

Nominated for the 1995 Philip K. Dick Award. All page numbers are from the mass market paperback edition published by Bantam Spectra ISBN 0-553-57241-5

• Consider impact before you consider benefit.
  • Chapter 2 “Do You Believe in Magic?” (p. 34; ecological catchphrase repeated often in the book)

• In the beginning and the end, it’s all a crapshoot. The Cosmic Mind does play dice. Loves to gamble, in fact.
  • Chapter 2 “Do You Believe in Magic?” (p. 35)

• To give is best, live responsibly or die.
  • Chapter 2 “Do You Believe in Magic?” (p. 43)

• What was that teacher trying to do?
  That teacher was trying to break her spirit.
  But why would school do that? So you could become someone like her parents and believe in the things they believe in. So you won’t believe in the things they don’t believe in. And believe you’re a happy person whose life has meaning. So you will go to your job and do whatever gross thing someone tells you to do and get drunk on Friday and Saturday nights and pay taxes and bills. That’s why.
  • Chapter 4 “Foxy Lady” (pp. 81-82)

• You are either the man in the white coat or you are the monkey. Susan sees herself as the monkey.
  • Chapter 4 “Foxy Lady” (p. 82)

• She’s got space. Lots of space in her house. What about in her heart?
  • Chapter 6 “Purple Haze” (p. 124)

• “Acid,” says the guy with the eyes, “raises your powers of integration so that everything is important.”
  “Acid,” says Chiron, “lowers your powers of discrimination so that everything seems important.”
  • Chapter 6 “Purple Haze” (p. 133)

• I didn’t lie. I implied.
  • Chapter 6 “Purple Haze” (p. 139)

• The technopolistic plutocracy will dump pollutants into the atmosphere for another century on the grounds that compliance with limits is too expensive.
  • Chapter 8 “Ball and Chain” (p. 176)

• The girl with her face. A Devolved Entity Manifested from the Other Now? A demon that wants to off her? It’s like the rumors of concentration camps. So weird she can’t believe it, and so plausible she can’t afford to disbelieve it.
  • Chapter 10 “Dedicated to the One I Love” (p. 224)

• I have not told the police about it. Every member of the police department I have encountered during my stay in San Francisco has been nearly as surly and intractable as my rapist friend, because I look like a hippie. Each time I attempted to explain myself I was rebuffed or threatened.
  From this experience I am tempted to draw an odd analogy: under stress, neither the policeman nor the rapist allows an opportunity for rational communication. Each one relies on violence to make to make his impression. This is not an accident, but, rather evidence of a widespread sickness. When will violence stop long enough for communication to begin? On second thought, perhaps I am doing the police department a grave disservice in not attempting to put them in contact with the rapist. Maybe, with just a little mind-bending, that rapist would make a damned good cop, and both could swagger together, true soul brothers, under the many-colored cloak of Fascism.
  • Chapter 10 “Dedicated to the One I Love” (p. 230)

• Since they were little, wishing on the first star of the evening, they both understood this: the most exciting game in life is to invent yourself.
  • Chapter 10 “Dedicated to the One I Love” (p. 236)

• Junk does that. Junk is a forge. You enter the fire and come out twisted.
  • Chapter 15 “Over Under Sideways Down” (p. 329)

• By the time people could speak about mandatory population control in a rational way, it was too late.
  • Chapter 19 “Hello Goodbye” (p. 406)

The Golden Nineties (1995)

All page numbers are from the mass market paperback edition published by Bantam Spectra ISBN 0-553-57307-1

• When you finally cash it in
      Out in Frisco;
  And you end this life of sin
      Out in Frisco;
  They will gently toll a bell,
  Plant your carcass in a dell,
  There’s no need to go to hell,
      You’re in Frisco.
  • Epigram

• That’s what failure did to: run you out, plucked your bones, sucked you dry. It was revolting. A failed man is a loathsome thing.
  • Chapter 2, “A Toast to the First and Last Chance Saloon” (p. 43)

• “Boredom,” he says, “is the province of the unimaginative soul.”
  • Chapter 3, “Miss Malone’s Boardinghouse for Gentlemen” (p. 83)

• The future survives because people care. Live responsibly or die.
  • Chapter 5, “Strolling Along the Cocktail Route” (p. 168)

• He uncorks the absinthe, pours three rounds.…
  “After the first glass you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. After the third, you see things as they really are, which is the most horrible thing in the world.”
  • Chapter 6, “Absinthe at the Poodle Dog” (p. 199; ellipsis represents the elision of a brief descriptive passage)

• Cosmicists speak of the Great Good, equalizing humanity with all creatures and things. Does a cosmicist accept the death of a child as the same as—say—the destruction of a butterfly? Suppose it’s a rare butterfly and the child is one of twelve billion.
  • Chapter 7, “Nine Twenty Sacramento Street” (p. 208)

• What is destiny for any human being? What becomes of probabilities that collapse out of the timeline? Does destiny depend on who witnesses?
  • Chapter 7, “Nine Twenty Sacramento Street” (p. 228)

• What is the value of a life when the world is burdened with twelve billion people?
  • Chapter 13, “Woodward’s Dancing Bears” (p. 388)

• “My angel,” he says, cradling her.
  “I’m not an angel, Daniel.”
  “Yes, you are.”
  “No! I’m not an angel and I’m not a whore. I have intelligence and passion, strength and perseverance. I am capable of abstract thought, intellectual accomplishment, and artistic expression just like you, sir.”
  He ponders that as the brougham trots up Fifth Street to Market. “What shall I call you, then?”
  Zhu smiles. “You may call me a woman.”
  • Chapter 13, “Woodward’s Dancing Bears” (p. 397)

• If women go into politics, they’ll wind up as bad as men.
  • Chapter 14, “High Teas with Miss Anthony” (p. 398)

• Prostitution has little to do with morality, and everything to do with poverty.
  • Chapter 14, “High Teas with Miss Anthony” (p. 407)