Alastair Reynolds Quotes
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'There’s a catch,' Skellsgard said.'Another one? But of course there is. You know, I’m thinking I should start a collection.'
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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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I don’t question your loyalty, Skade. I just wonder exactly what it is you’re loyal to.
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His parents had abdicated responsibility to an illusion.
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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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'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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'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 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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'Maybe it’s not as bad as she fears. Old people always think the world is going to ruin. It’s their job.''Maybe they’re right,' Floyd replied.
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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.'
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'A splendidly inept thing,' Sylveste said, nodding despite himself.'What?''The human capacity for grief. It just isn’t capable of providing an adequate emotional response once the dead exceed a few dozen in number. And it doesn’t just level off-it just gives up, resets itself to zero. Admit it. None of us feel a damn about these people.'
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'Personally,' Scorpio said, 'I think it’s time to stop thinking chivalry and start thinking artillery.'
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Memo to himself: the one way to make people panic was to warn them not to.
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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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I’m just saying that right now we could all use a degree of perspective. Because this is not the end of the world.
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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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'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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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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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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'Don’t you agree with me?''On some distant theoretical level, just possibly.'
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All machines knew what would happen to them when their masters lost faith in their infallibility.
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'That would require an unprecedented leap of faith.''I don’t do faith,' Scorpio said.
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'Haven’t you ever heard of morale-building?' Khouri had asked.'Heard of it,' Volyova said. 'Don’t happen to agree with it. Would you rather be happy and dead, or scared and alive?'
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Everything looked utterly normal, exactly as Thalia had expected save for the absence of a rampaging mob.