185 quotes
I imagine my sorrow for your loss will prove containable.
Surface Detail (2010)
Allow me to attenuate my portentousness for you.
Against a Dark Background (1993)
Ah, dear. How fine the line is between acceptably defiant bravado and hopelessly delusional boasting.
The Hydrogen Sonata (2013)
There now; cynical, paranoid and pessimistic. I think that completes the set, doesn’t it?
Surface Detail (2010)
How depressing, the Sleeper Service thought. That it should all come down to this; the person with the biggest stick prevails.
Excession (1996)
On the other hand it could have been worse. And arguably one way of making it worse would be to admit just how badly things had actually gone.
Surface Detail (2010)
Some problems were generational; you just had to wait for the relevant elders to die off and be replaced with more progressive types. With luck.
Surface Detail (2010)
That was the thing about traitors: they were people who’d already changed their minds at least once.
Surface Detail (2010)
The double-sun system was relatively poor in comets; there were only a hundred billion of them.
Excession (1996)
“I do believe my sarcasm-meter just twitched.”
“A false positive, I fear. I was being entirely sincere.”
The Hydrogen Sonata (2013)
Roundly insulting one’s superiors behind their backs was one of the perks of being inferior, Choubris held.
Matter (2008)
The combination of modern ordnance and outdated tactics had, as usual, created enormous casualties on both sides.
Excession (1996)
And what was glory but something that reduced the more there were of you to share it?
Surface Detail (2010)
No! Get away from me, you wittering purple rogues! Away and become bankers the lot of you—admit what you really love!
Inversions (1998)
“His opinion was: ‘as a challenge, without peer. As music, without merit.’”
The Hydrogen Sonata (2013)
“I hear what you say,” Prin told him, keeping calm.… “It’s nonsense, of course, but it is interesting to know that you hold such views.”
Surface Detail (2010)
The meeting was a benign environment; potentially just as tremendously boring as war, but without the slivers of utter terror stuck in there as well.
Surface Detail (2010)
Maybe it wasn’t anything remotely to do with religion, mysticism or metaphilosophy after all; maybe it was more banal; maybe it was just...accounting.
Excession (1996)
Perdition awaits at the end of a road constructed entirely from good intentions, the devil emerges from the details and hell abides in the small print.
Transition (2009)
Really we’re no better—you’re no better—than the savages. They always find excuses to justify their crimes, too. The point is not to commit them in the first place.
Matter (2008)