Adam-Troy Castro Quotes

What followed was the well-known phenomenon of a group, asked a simple question with an obvious answer, that nevertheless remains silent as everybody waits for somebody else to trigger a suspected rhetorical trap.

It occurred to me a long time ago, Mr. Lastogne, that diplomacy has very little to do with making friends.

He’d played me very well. He’s sensed my misanthropy, and played up that aspect of his own personality. He’d even accused the Porrinyards of the same failing. But was that just the typical gamesmanship of a habitual manipulator, or the obfuscation of a sociopath?

All of this had seemed so obvious and vital to them once. But then it changed, in the timeless time since putting their vessel together; some might even say, they’d degenerated. They were no longer the beings who’d set themselves an impossible task and built themselves a miraculous vessel to help them accomplish it. In that time they had forgotten all of their arcane and hard-won knowledge and become passengers, instead of engineers. Now the bubble piloted itself, without their input; and the glorious mission that had once been the whole reason for their existence now seemed nothing but an ancient folly, too far gone to change.
They wouldn’t have understood Vietnam, but they would have sympathized.

In short, they were like the complacent everywhere: in that they were already dead, and did not yet happen to know it…

The question is, just how do we tackle this problem? Do we merely modulate your Ego so it's less irritating? Admittedly, that might make you easier to take – but it won't address the real core of the problem, which is that when all is said and done you really don't have a lot to be egotistical about."
"That can't be true! My Haiku alone –"
"First rule of human social interaction, Mr. Porter: If you have to lead with Haiku, you've already lost.

Management’s never been interested in really doing the job, not at any point in human history. Management’s true agenda has always been making things more pleasant for Management.

When you get to the core of it, we’re all aliens to one another, raised according to some common precepts but otherwise ruled by paradigms far removed from those of the people around us. The tragedy is that we tend to judge others by standards that may make perfect sense to us but which are most likely totally irrelevant to them.

Any messages?"
Oscin said, "Just a lot of people dreading whatever you plan to do next.

Art isn’t just technique, in any culture…it’s also Content. It’s understanding not just How, but also What, to express.

Human bureaucracies, and most alien ones, are slow by design, their response times slowed to a crawl despite all the technologies we employ to make their progress visible to the naked eye. That’s because they’re still subject to all the delays native to organic life: the mistakes, indecision, the malice, the covering of asses, and the reluctance to transmit even the most urgent message until after a leisurely break for lunch.

She’s a little bit below mediocre, isn’t she? And the worst kind of below-par personality at that: the kind who believes herself destined for great things.

Are you refusing a direct order?"
"Tell me to die for no good reason and I'll do more than refuse, I'll shove the order up your ass.

It was nobody’s idea of luxurious travel, but then I’d known luxurious travel once or twice in my life and found that it just got me to places at the same speed while forcing me to interact with the kind of people who could afford such passage.

“In my experience, mediocrity in life-or-death situations gets people killed.”
He looked knowing. “Read your history. Greatness kills more.”
There was nothing I could say to that.