222 quotes
I have a feeling that a bored Ramona would be a very bad girl indeed, in a your-life-insurance-policy-just-expired kind of way.
The Jennifer Morgue (2006)
I am sick and tired of reality refusing to conform to the requirements of my meticulously-researched near-future or proximate-present fictions.
It’s a thing of beauty, the ability to spin the cloth of reality, and you’re a sucker for it: Isn’t story-telling what being human is all about?
Halting State (2007)
I don’t get enough practice at killing people to not feel bad about it; I hope I never do, although that’s looking like a forlorn wish these days.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
Unfortunately it’s also true to say that good management is a bit like oxygen—it’s invisible and you don’t notice its presence until it’s gone, and then you’re sorry.
The Fuller Memorandum (2010)
He’s been off-line for the best part of six hours and is getting a panicky butterfly stomach at the idea of not being in touch with everything that’s happened in the last twenty kiloseconds.
Accelerando (2005)
Humans are just barely intelligent tool users; Darwinian evolutionary selection stopped when language and tool use converged, leaving the average hairy meme carrier sadly deficient in smarts.
Accelerando (2005)
Most police work boils down to minimizing the impact on society of stupidity; of the remainder, the overwhelming majority is about malice and deliberate evil, but it’s still almost all stupid.
Rule 34 (2011)
Like I said: the only god I believe in is coming back. And when he arrives, I’ll be waiting with a shotgun.
The Fuller Memorandum (2010)
“The programmers have a saying, you know? ‘If we understand how we do it, it isn’t artificial intelligence anymore.’”
Rule 34 (2011)
Story of my life. I wasted nearly a decade before I realized that life is not a game and there are no save points or second chances.
The Labyrinth Index (2018)
It’s all he can do to refrain from prayer. God probably doesn’t want to know what he’s doing here this morning, a borderline accomplice to evil in service to a greater cause.
The Nightmare Stacks (2016)
It was a lousy plan, the only thing to commend it being the fact that all the alternatives were worse.
Singularity Sky (2003)
“Am I making myself clear?”
I sit down again. “Yes, for very bureaucratic values of clear.”
The Atrocity Archives (2004)
This is rural England, after all; please set your watches back thirty years…
Equoid (2013)
Lord Acton said power corrupts, but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
“We have a problem, sir.”
“What do you mean, a problem?” demanded the Admiral. “We’re not supposed to have problems—that’s the enemy’s job!”
Singularity Sky (2003)
It’s like a steam locomotive or a stone axe: just because it’s obsolete doesn’t make it any less of an achievement, or any less fit for purpose.
The Fuller Memorandum (2010)
You win some, you lose some. And when you lose, you have to pull yourself together and go back for more. Otherwise, the other side wins by default.
The Apocalypse Codex (2012)
He gestures at a skeletal contraption of chromed steel and thin, black leather that only Le Corbusier could have mistaken for a chair: “Have a seat.”
The Jennifer Morgue (2006)