222 quotes
You’re like a priest who awakens one day and realizes that his god has been replaced by a cardboard cut-out, and he’s no longer able to ignore his own disbelief. And, like the priest, you’ve sacrificed all hope of a normal life on the altar of something you no longer believe in.
Rule 34 (2011)
And because this is now a political problem, the usual political syllogism applies
The Delirium Brief (2017)
It was an okay vintage, if you could get past the fact that it was wine, and—stripped of the ability to get drunk on it—wine was just sour grape juice.
Iron Sunrise (2004)
“But has it occurred to you that there might be a reason for that?”
“I can think of several.” I cross my legs. “Mostly ranging from the inane to the criminally irresponsible.”
The Rhesus Chart (2014)
Had enough of my poetry yet? That’s why they pay me to fight demons instead.
Overtime (2009)
We, the structures we collectively refer to as “life,” are patterns of information—temporary reversals of the arrow of entropy within our universe—and conscious minds are the most concentrated such patterns we know of.
The Nightmare Stacks (2016)
He’s found a teapot and milk and is brewing up, because that’s what the English do when they’ve just broken out of military prison one jump ahead of murderous assassins from an alien death god cult, then survived being shot at by a main battle tank.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
They’re nuts. Completely insane! I don’t get this gambling thing. Didn’t these people study statistics at university? Evidently not...
The Jennifer Morgue (2006)
It’s a classic case of misplaced accounting priorities, valuing depreciable capital assets a thousand times more highly than the fruits of actual labor—but that’s the nature of the government organization.
The Jennifer Morgue (2006)
“What happens if we don’t do this?”
“I don’t know. Probably we don’t die. I mean, maybe probably. Possibly maybe probably.”
The Nightmare Stacks (2016)
Her heart pounds. Dating, with its conventions of multiple social encounters as a prelude to fucking, seems absurdly complex to her, like cooking your own food rather than having servants and poison-testers prepare it for you.
The Nightmare Stacks (2016)
We use committees for all the ulterior purposes for which they might have been designed: diffusion of executive responsibility, plausible deniability, misdirection, providing the appearance of activity without the substance, and protecting the guilty.
The Rhesus Chart (2014)
Yup, that pretty much confirms the diagnosis. This is the desk of a diseased mind, hugely ambitious, prone to taking insanely dangerous risks. He’s not ashamed of boasting about it—he clearly believes in better alpha-primate dominance displays through carpentry.
The Jennifer Morgue (2006)
Experiments in digitizing and running neural wetware under emulation are well established; some radical libertarians claim that, as the technology matures, death—with its draconian curtailment of property and voting rights—will become the biggest civil rights issue of all.
Accelerando (2005)
I am the Eschaton. I am not your God.
I am descended from you, and exist in your future.
Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else.
Singularity Sky (2003)
Before the singularity, human beings living on Earth had looked at the stars and consoled themselves in their isolation with the comforting belief that the universe didn’t care.
Unfortunately, they were mistaken.
Singularity Sky (2003)
Humans are not as unsophisticated as mulch wrigglers, they can see the writing on the wall. Is it any surprise, that among the ones who look outward, the real debate is not over whether to run, but over how far and how fast?
Accelerando (2005)
“Friendly fascism,” says Sadeq. “It matters not, whosoever is in charge. I could tell you tales from my parents, of growing up with a revolution. To never harbor self-doubt is poison for the soul, and these aliens want to inflict their certainties upon us.”
Accelerando (2005)
Shopping is the true religion of Middle America, and this Walmart is the most eclectic of mega-churches, perpetually understaffed and a bit unkempt, with stock flowing off the shelves and piles of stripped packaging forming cardboard snow drifts in corners.
The Labyrinth Index (2018)
Didn’t they know that the only unhackable computer is one that’s running a secure operating system, welded inside a steel safe, buried under a ton of concrete at the bottom of a coal mine guarded by the SAS and a couple of armoured divisions, and switched off?
The Atrocity Archives (2004)