Alastair Reynolds Quotes
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She’d walked a delicate line with commendable skill.But sometimes the best case wasn’t good enough.
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It was one of the oldest tricks of mob-management: give them a hate figure.
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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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'You look older, son.''Yes, well, some of us have to get on with the business of being alive in the entropic universe.'
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'The central defect of the human mind,' Custine said, 'is its unfortunate habit of seeing patterns where none exist. Of course, that is also its chief asset.''But sometimes a very dangerous one.'
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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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The battle sunk towards the horizon. Presently it would be gone, leaving a sky unsullied by human affairs.
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'You seem upset by the fact that we’re hated and feared.''It does give one pause for thought.'
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It was a glaring omission, a sign of cosmic sloppiness. Not even that, Vasko corrected himself. It was a sign of cosmic obliviousness. The universe didn’t know what was happening here. It didn’t know and it didn’t care. It didn’t even know that it didn’t know.
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I’m fed up with everyone being lied to just because the administration thinks it’s in our best interests not to know all the facts.
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One trusted machines. But one never expected machines to return the favor.
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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 gather you were all too busy killing each other.''That’s a fairly reductive summary of our history, but I don’t suppose it’s too far from the truth.'
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But when she tried to say something, the words always seemed trite and inadequate. Nothing measured up. When any moment might be their last, there was nothing she could ever imagine saying that had the necessary dignity to fill that instant. Silence was better. Silence had its own dignity.
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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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'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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It was bad, but it was some other slightly less piquant flavour of bad.
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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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He had never lost that mingled combination of awe and terror that welled up in him when confronted by the routinely huge distances of space.
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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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'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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She wondered if she could put a dart in his eye. It would not kill him, but it might take the edge off his cockiness.
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Rashmika could tell when anyone around her was lying. But seeing through her own deceptions was another matter entirely.