183 quotes
People lived and died and did strange, pointless things to themselves. So did societies, be they city-sized states or galactic empires encompassing thousands of solar systems. Everything came and went, everything was new and bright with promise once and old and worn out later, and everything left a small, diminishing stain on eternity, a mark that time would eventually erase.
House of Suns (2008)
It was astonishing how quickly friendship could turn to enmity, she thought, like a compass needle swinging from one pole to the other.
They’d been excellent friends. They’d make excellent enemies as well.
Pushing Ice (2005)
But sanity, Vasko decided, was like the pattern of lights he could see through his cabin window. In almost any direction the only way to travel was into darkness, and there was a lot more darkness than light.
Absolution Gap (2003)
Believe me, Kanu—the one thing you don’t do in emergencies is think things through. Thinking things through gets you a headstone and a nice epitaph. She thought things through. See how that worked out for her.
Poseidon's Wake (2015)
“Something worse.”
After a silence Dreyfus said: “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that there’s always something worse.”
“Yes. Odd that that should be what keeps us going, but there it is. We take our comforts where we may.”
Belladonna Nights and Other Stories (2021)
It was his experience that crises in space fell into two categories: those that killed you immediately, usually without much warning, and those that gave you plenty of time to ruminate on the problem, even if no solution was very likely.
Redemption Ark (2002)
You owned the world when you were a young man, felt it like it was fashioned to fit your hands. You could do anything with it you wanted to. But the world kept changing, and sooner or later there came a day when it didn’t feel like you were the one the world was interested in any more.
Belladonna Nights and Other Stories (2021)
They’re your children. The more you try to force them to be like you, the more they’re going to flare off in different directions like wild fireworks, the more they’re going to surprise and disappoint you.
House of Suns (2008)
It was easy to sound that confident; less easy to believe it in his heart. They had got this far did not give them an automatic guarantee of success. The world did not work like that. It took pleasure in punishing the cocksure.
Terminal World (2010)
“I can’t tell you how much happier I’d be meeting a bunch of artificial intelligences if I also happened to have one on my side.”
“Can we drop the ‘artificial intelligence’? It’s a bit like me calling you a meat-based processing system.”
On the Steel Breeze (2013)
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.
Absolution Gap (2003)
Afterwards, when Clavain tried to imaging how he might describe it, he found that words were never going to be adequate for the task. And that was no surprise: evolution had shaped language to convey many concepts, but going from a single to a networked topology of self was not amongst them.
Galactic North (2006)
“Ideology is all there is.”
“Really? I would have thought there were many other human qualities worth considering. Fairness. Generosity. A sense of humour. A willingness to see the best in people, even those we do not automatically agree with.”
Poseidon's Wake (2015)
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.
Revelation Space (2000)
Grafenwalder shoots a sidelong glance at Ursula Goodglass, wondering what their marriage must be like. Clearly sex isn’t in the cards, but he doubts that it was ever the main interest in their lives. Games, especially those of prestige and subterfuge, are amongst the chief entertainments of the Rust Belt moneyed.
Galactic North (2006)
“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.
Redemption Ark (2002)
We have been clever, and on occasion we have been foolish. For smart monkeys, we can, when the mood takes us, be exceedingly stupid. But it was cleverness that brought us to this point, and it is only cleverness that will serve us from now on.
We have no time for anything else.
Blue Remembered Earth (2012)
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.
Century Rain (2004)
She worked quickly, but not because she considered the commission beneath her. It was simply the way she always approached her art. Preparation, forethought, hours of meditation, then an explosion of swift and decisive action, like the quick and merciful descent of a sword. Execution, in every sense of the word.
Blue Remembered Earth (2012)
“I don’t trust you.”
“Of course you don’t. I know I wouldn’t. And I’m not asking you to. I’m not putting you in a situation in which your trust of me is even remotely relevant. I’m just pointing a gun to your head and giving you orders.”
Chasm City (2001)