Alastair Reynolds Quotes
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Maps had never really been his thing, even during his days under Scorpio in Chasm City. There, it had hardly mattered. Blood’s motto had always been that if you needed a map to find your way around a neighbourhood, you were already in trouble.
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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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It was one of the oldest tricks of mob-management: give them a hate figure.
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'I’m not a bad man, Ilia. I’m just someone who knows exactly what needs to be done.''Like you said, always the most dangerous sort.'
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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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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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She’d walked a delicate line with commendable skill.But sometimes the best case wasn’t good enough.
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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 Jugglers store patterns, but they seldom show any sign of comprehending actual content. We’re dealing with a mindless biological archiving system, a museum without a curator.
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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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Evolution doesn’t greatly care about what happens to creatures once they’ve passed on their genetic heritage.
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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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'You seem upset by the fact that we’re hated and feared.''It does give one pause for thought.'
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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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'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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'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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'That would require an unprecedented leap of faith.''I don’t do faith,' Scorpio said.
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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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'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.
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'I’m hoping no one will be quite that stupid,' Sparver said. 'Then again, this is baseline humans we’re dealing with.'
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Don’t overestimate your familiarity with technologies you barely understand. It could be your undoing.
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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.