Alastair Reynolds Quotes
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His parents had abdicated responsibility to an illusion.
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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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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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'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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One trusted machines. But one never expected machines to return the favor.
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In Clavain’s experience, it was the less comforting possibility that generally turned out to be the case. It was the way the universe worked.
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It seemed that she had not so much misjudged the woman as assigned her to completely the wrong species.
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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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'That would require an unprecedented leap of faith.''I don’t do faith,' Scorpio said.
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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 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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The future might have been crammed with miracles and wonders, but it also offered truly awesome opportunities for screwing up.
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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 one of the oldest tricks of mob-management: give them a hate figure.
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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 bad, but it was some other slightly less piquant flavour of bad.
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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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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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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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You are that rarest of creatures: a man with the wisdom to see beyond his own time.
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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 would worry, just as you worry. It’s the people who don’t worry-those who never have any doubts that what they’re doing is good and right-they’re the ones that cause the problems.
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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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'Is that as bad as it sounds?' Floyd asked.'No,' Auger said. 'It’s worse. A lot worse.'