Space Opera Quotes

Time slowed as metal shards enveloped her like shattered glass. None pierced her of course, but it seemed as though she might be able to reach out and pluck one from the sky.She settled for stretching out an imagined hand, palm upturned, and letting a shard fall through it untouched like the ghost she had become.

~ G.s. Jennsen

God, she was beautiful. Hair a tangled mess, clothes torn, lips pale and swollen, skin streaked in dirt. And she was so damn beautiful and flawed and perfect.

~ G.s. Jennsen

She didn’t want to be the savior of humanity. She never had. She didn’t want to be the vanguard—of destruction or salvation. What she had really wanted was to be a girl whose father lived to show her the stars.Instead she had been left to wander them alone. Until she discovered someone who saw the stars as she did.

~ G.s. Jennsen

We—humanity—didn’t come this far by being afraid. Explorers and visionaries have willingly headed off to certain death for thousands of years and by doing so brought us to where we are today. No one has ever told us ‘no’ and succeeded in making it stick for long.We accede to these aliens’ demands and we’ll wither away. It may take centuries or even millennia, but we’ll be so busy cowering in fear we’ll forget to move forward.I say we fight.

~ G.s. Jennsen

He steadied himself by resting one palm on her thigh and the other on the armrest, and rose to his knees. “I’ll be damned.”“Possibly. But not today, I think.

~ G.s. Jennsen

If humanity is annihilated because we were too busy squabbling with one another to manage a proper stand, we probably deserve the annihilation.

~ G.s. Jennsen

His whisper continued to stream a silent cacophony of warnings, kill and damage reports and pleas for assistance.He allowed himself two seconds to watch it and came away with the sense they were losing. Not lost and not soon, but losing.

~ G.s. Jennsen

He was terrified he was making the wrong choice. He relied on his instincts in his work but now he didn’t dare trust them. The wound of betrayal still burned raw in his chest and another cut might be the killing blow.But it was the end of the world and there may be no more second chances.

~ G.s. Jennsen

You’re covered in blood again.”“I really am.” “Why are you always covered in blood when I wake up after being unconscious?” “Usually for the same reason you were unconscious, I think.

~ G.s. Jennsen

She burst into her hotel room pulling her blouse over her head with one hand while she yanked her shoes off with the other. No way was she going to face an alien invasion in heels and silk.

~ G.s. Jennsen

Good luck with the aliens, and if we survive this feel free to look me up on your next vacation.”“Good luck with the aliens? You are such a prick.

~ G.s. Jennsen

You’re insane.”“It’ll work.”“Which does not alter the fact that you are insane.

~ G.s. Jennsen

His punch knocked her back a meter into the wall. His fist had moved of his own volition, carrying a rage and frustration all its own. To his dismay, she didn’t fall. People so small as her always fell.No tears pooled in her eyes; instead they flared golden amber as she rubbed her jaw and pushed off the wall to stand rigid straight. A peculiar smile danced across her lips as blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and down her chin.

~ G.s. Jennsen

The Artificial’s speech pattern was an idiosyncratic mix of awkward and colloquial. It was unexpectedly endearing. “I just have good instincts. Mostly I love being in space.” But you are not ‘in’ space. You are in your starship and your starship is in space. It is not so different than being on a planet. “Oh, Valkyrie, you have no idea.” Tell me then.

~ G.s. Jennsen

So that’s why I say ‘never have anything you can’t walk away from.’ Especially a woman. For them, because this is a dangerous life we lead and you never know if or when it will blow back on those close to you.And for you, because trust me when I tell you there exists no greater perdition than the guilt of causing the death of someone you love.

~ G.s. Jennsen

She thought he might have said her name, but it was background radiation accompanying the hum in her ears and the symphony in her head——a song of quantum mechanics and trajectory calculations and astroscience physics and where to go, where to go, where to…

~ G.s. Jennsen

As soon as he had departed she directed her attention to the others.“I need a shielded containment box, radiation gloves and a micro welding torch. And a crescent wrench.

~ G.s. Jennsen

If her daughter’s ship had been disintegrated in space there would never be evidence of it, never an answer to what had happened to her.If she stopped to ponder the implications she might break. And Admiral Miriam Solovy did not break.

~ G.s. Jennsen

Blood drummed in her ears and adrenaline coursed through her veins, driving her to move. To act. Her hands trembled against his chest.Time vanished out from beneath her feet, one accelerating second at a time.

~ G.s. Jennsen

They flew high above savanna grassland. The sky was the deep cornflower blue of a sunny late afternoon on Earth…exactly the color of a sunny late afternoon on Earth.Only there was no sun. Whatever was lighting this planet, it wasn’t a star.

~ G.s. Jennsen

Above the curving arc of the planet, a mammoth explosion plumed crimson and charcoal then erupted in a starburst of crystaline white which for a microsecond shone brighter than a sun. For the briefest moment he allowed himself to entertain the notion that they might win this battle.Then the real battle began.

~ G.s. Jennsen

Her weight settled on her back foot as she crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, now legitimately baffled.“How delusional are you, aliens in your head notwithstanding?

~ G.s. Jennsen

Do you love me?” His voice rang flat in his own ears, deadened and weighted with the recognition there was only one chance, and a fool’s chance at that

~ G.s. Jennsen

Individuals reacted in any number of ways to extreme stress and, relatedly, to impending death.A non-negligible percentage of people reacted in a manner which could be summed up by, ‘Screw it, I’m going out in style!

~ G.s. Jennsen

He wanted to grind every Federation world into dust beneath his boot as his army blazed a trail of blood and corpses all the way to Seneca.He wanted to storm their inner sanctum and fire a laser into the skull of their Field Marshal while their Chairman watched, then fire a laser into the skull of their Chairman.He wanted to burn their bodies on a pyre and carry the ashes back to Deucali and spread them on his mother’s consecrated grave.

~ G.s. Jennsen

She gazed at the bay of wrecked shuttles in dismay. The last of her adrenaline seeped away at the sight of the widespread destruction.It occurred to her then, for perhaps the first time in this long nightmare, that she was going to die.

~ G.s. Jennsen

Guilt ripped into her like a rusty, serrated knife. It took up residence in her soul, settling in and getting comfortable so it could saw away ragged pieces of flesh and leave her to bleed.

~ G.s. Jennsen

She settled back in the chair and draped one leg casually over the other, her hands coming to rest together on her knee.“Arrest me. Torture me. Parade me about in the public square. You will have your prize catch. And you will lose everything.

~ G.s. Jennsen

Deep in the recesses of her mind, she knew they were probably watching. They watched everything, after all.Let them watch. Let them see what it meant to be human. To live.Let them see what it meant to love, and be loved in return.

~ G.s. Jennsen

Her pulse raced, pounding in her ears above the howling wind. A wave of dizziness crashed over her with the rapid flood of adrenaline. She gasped in a breath. “Don’t let go.

~ G.s. Jennsen

We don’t get to choose what happens to us—but we always get to choose how we react to it.

~ G.s. Jennsen

The brain represented the most complex organism ever to exist, and impossible to tame. Morality could not be spawned by tweaking a few genes or shutting off a few neurons. Not yet. So though humanity conquered the very stars, it remained unable to conquer the darkness within.

~ G.s. Jennsen

I wouldn't be your best and most marvelous friend in the galaxy if I didn’t point out there might be a few negative consequences from all…” she gazed upward and twirled her hand in the air “…this.

~ G.s. Jennsen

That excuse only works until you discover the person is merely an individual like any other.

~ G.s. Jennsen

Alexis, please mind your mouth. Cursing in Russian is still cursing.

~ G.s. Jennsen

He simply preferred the sensation of soil beneath his feet and wind in his hair, of fresh, non-recycled air which carried on it the scent and taste of life. He preferred what was solid and real, where if you could see it you could touch it, feel its texture between the tips of your fingers. As far as he knew, no one had ever touched a star. Not even her.

~ G.s. Jennsen

In the space of a breath he had crossed the distance separating them and spun her around into a vise grip from behind. Somehow, the gun was out of her hand and in his. He locked her arms between them and raised the gun to her temple. His voice resonated low and dangerous at her ear. “Just so we’re very clear. If I want to kill you, I can kill you.

~ G.s. Jennsen

In sum, every pore of his being oozed one thing…okay, FINE. Every pore oozed two things. The first was irrelevant. The second was dangerous.

~ G.s. Jennsen

No…you can ask for a beautiful, witty, intelligent yet minxy woman in your arms every night, a mansion on a hill—or better yet in the sky—and the best bodyguards to protect you when someone does inevitably try to kill you. For starters.

~ G.s. Jennsen

Yes, she loved her ship more than she had loved him. But what she loved even more was what it gave her: freedom, and the key to the marvels of space. It gave her the stars, and she doubted she could ever love anything or anyone more than she loved the stars.

~ G.s. Jennsen