Skip to content

Quotes from Belladonna Nights and Other Stories — Alastair Reynolds

born 1966 United Kingdom

← All quotes by Alastair Reynolds

8 quotes

There’s nothing like a stupid, accidental death to remind you of the supreme futility of everything.

Belladonna Nights and Other Stories (2021)

In its purest distillation beauty had always been merciless.

Belladonna Nights and Other Stories (2021)

All of it is physics, though, whether you are studying starlings or quarks.

Belladonna Nights and Other Stories (2021)

“Imagine a permanent, shivering gloom, and never a moment without hunger, thirst and exhaustion. Imagine the constant fear of suffering illness or injury.”
“You’ve just described nine-tenths of human history.”

Belladonna Nights and Other Stories (2021)

That was my plan. But there is an old saying about plans and war.
I would have done well to heed it.

Belladonna Nights and Other Stories (2021)

“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)

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)

“And what keeps you going, exactly?”
“Insulting my friends. Making new ones, to compensate for the ones I already insulted just a bit too much. You’d be surprised how much work those activities demand of me—it’s practically a full-time occupation.”
“In fairness, you’re getting very good at it.”

Belladonna Nights and Other Stories (2021)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Alastair Reynolds (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.