Alastair Reynolds Quotes
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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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'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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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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'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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I don’t question your loyalty, Skade. I just wonder exactly what it is you’re loyal to.
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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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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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His parents had abdicated responsibility to an illusion.
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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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'Personally,' Scorpio said, 'I think it’s time to stop thinking chivalry and start thinking artillery.'
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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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'That would require an unprecedented leap of faith.''I don’t do faith,' Scorpio said.
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'Don’t you agree with me?''On some distant theoretical level, just possibly.'
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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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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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'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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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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All machines knew what would happen to them when their masters lost faith in their infallibility.
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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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'What happened?''Let’s just say my efforts to reprogram the weapon were not an unqualified success, shall we, and leave it at that?' She hated discussing failure almost as much as she hated the thing itself.
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There was something about the cocksure confidence of that statement that gave Auger goose pimples. It was like an invitation to fate.
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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.