Alastair Reynolds Quotes
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'It’s all in the fine print. You should read it sometime.''When I’m gripped by existential boredom,' Khouri said, 'I might try it.'
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But make no mistake. My counterpart is capable of a great deal of ruthlessness in pursuit of a just cause. He believes he has right on his side. And men who think they have right on their side are always the most dangerous sort.
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Anxiety is a useful tool: it forces us to make plans. But when too much anxiety freezes us into indecision, it needs checking.
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Afterwards, when Clavain tried to imaging how he might describe it, he found that words were never going to be adequate for the task. And that was no surprise: evolution had shaped language to convey many concepts, but going from a single to a networked topology of self was not amongst them.
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His parents had abdicated responsibility to an illusion.
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Who was it who said that a wise man speaks when he has something to say, but a fool speaks because he must?
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'But at least you cared. At least you were ready to do something.''This little mess,' Auger said, 'is all because of people who were ready to do something. People like me, who always know when they’re right and everyone else is wrong. Maybe what we need is a few less of us.'
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'Until recently we were a trio. Before that, a quartet. Perhaps it’s just me, but I’m beginning to detect a trend.'
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'I’ll survive,' Floyd said. 'I’m a private detective. If I don’t get clouted on the head at least once a week, I’m not doing my job properly.'
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As always, it was necessary to strike a balance between a cavalier disregard for the rules and a professional understanding that some rules were more flexible than others.
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I don’t question your loyalty, Skade. I just wonder exactly what it is you’re loyal to.
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'Personally,' Scorpio said, 'I think it’s time to stop thinking chivalry and start thinking artillery.'
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The simple fact was that she no longer hated them as a matter of principle. It was also a source of shameful amazement that she could ever have wasted so much energy on groundless prejudice, when acceptance and tolerance would have been the easier, even the lazier, course.
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Clavain saw it all with sudden, heart-stopping clarity: all that mattered was the here and now. All that mattered was survival. Sentience that bowed down and accepted its own extinction-no matter what the long-term arguments, no matter how good the greater cause-was not the kind of sentience he was interested in preserving.
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Rashmika could tell when anyone around her was lying. But seeing through her own deceptions was another matter entirely.
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'Besides-we all know guns don’t kill people,do they?''No, it’s the small metal projectiles that generally do the killing,' Cahuella said, smiling.
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No one ever took music away from me, but I’m damned if it ever sounds quite as good as it used to when I was twenty.
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'Tell me, scientist to scientist, do you honestly think it will work?''We won’t know until we try,' Naqi said. Any other answer would have been politically hazardous: too much optimism and the politicians would have started asking just why the expensive project was needed in the first place. Too much pessimism and they would ask exactly the same question.
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Clavain felt little in the way of regret; more a sense of quiet relief that they were past the negotiating stage and into the infinitely more honest arena of actual battle.
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Naqi suspected that the ability to turn drunkenness on and off like a switch must be one of the most hallowed of diplomatic skills.
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Memo to himself: the one way to make people panic was to warn them not to.
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For whatever reason, I am now fully conscious. Perhaps all beta-levels are capable of this, or perhaps my sheer connectional complexity ensured that I exceeded some state of critical mass. I have no idea. All I know is that I think, and therefore I’m exceedingly angry.
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I like men mathematics with any great agility, but now I sensed it as a hard grid of truth underlying everything: bones shining through the thin flesh of the world.
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'Don’t tell me you aren’t the slightest bit curious, Norquinco.''I hope you burn in hell, Sky Haussmann.''I’ll take that as a yes.'