185 quotes
“I shall take that as meaning I am not being too hopelessly foolish.”
“You may still be, but then so may I.”
“Yes, well, let’s not make a competition out of it.”
The Hydrogen Sonata (2013)
He was tall and very dark-skinned and he had fabulously blond hair and a voice that could raise bumps on your skin at a hundred meters, or, better still, millimeters.
Excession (1996)
Hell was always for other people.
Surface Detail (2010)
They had faith and so would do things that were plainly not in their own immediate (or, often, long-term) best interests, because they just believed what they had been told.
The Algebraist (2004)
He, Tik…hated clashing, atonal music. He was basically…taking the piss, showing how…easy it was to write…how difficult to…listen to.
The Hydrogen Sonata (2013)
Lededje formed the uncomfortable impression that the other woman was trying hard to be reassuring. This had never proved to be a good sign in Lededje’s past and she seriously doubted the pattern was about to change now.
Surface Detail (2010)
Look at these humans! How could such glacial slowness even be called life? An age could pass, virtual empires rise and fall in the time they took to open their mouths to utter some new inanity!
Excession (1996)
'Destroying the whole universe' – an always tempting scenario when you realise in SF you can do anything – just seems too easy.
Of course, she does seem to be a rather good doctor. At the very least she has done the King no obvious harm, and that in my experience is far more than one might reasonably expect from a court physician.
Inversions (1998)
She supposed she ought to feel impressed that Genar-Hofoen was sticking to his principles in the face of imminent death—and she did feel a little admiration—but mostly she just thought he was being stupid.
Excession (1996)
Whether the Dweller List existed or not, everybody appeared to be acting as though it did, and that was all that mattered. It was a bit like money; all about trust, about faith. The value lay in what people believed, not in anything intrinsic.
The Algebraist (2004)
It looks perverted and wasteful to us, but then one thing that empires are not about is the efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness; both are typically accomplished despite the economic short-circuiting—corruption and favoritism, mostly—endemic to the system.
The Player of Games (1988)
Pain, or even just discomfort, is like the warning sent by a frontier guard, sir. You are free to choose to ignore it, but you should not be unduly surprised if you are subsequently over-run by invaders.
Inversions (1998)
The underlying point held; experience as well as common sense indicated that the most reliable method of avoiding self-extinction was not to equip oneself with the means to accomplish it in the first place.
Consider Phlebas (1987)
Ultimately the galaxy, indeed the sum of the universe in its entirety, was mostly nothing; average it all out and it made a pretty good vacuum. But within the foci of matter there were the systems, the stars and planets and habitats—what a cornucopia of life was there!
Matter (2008)
The only sin is selfishness.
Inversions (1998)
Not wide asleep; fast awake!
Feersum Endjinn (1994)
I’m just puzzled why I’m here. All I can think of is you still want to know something else. Or is this just the first circle of Hell? Do I stay here for ever being bored to death?
Surface Detail (2010)
We really are taking this person’s existence as being a fact, not a myth?
∞
We are. It turns out that the myth which has been so carefully fostered is that his existence is mythical.
The Hydrogen Sonata (2013)
“I suppose I’d only be exposing my hopeless naivety if I asked if there was some alternative to this.”
“It would be more of a hopeless inability to come to terms with reality,” the avatar told her.
Surface Detail (2010)