Alastair Reynolds Quotes

Clavain had been a soldier. He had killed more people than he could remember, even though those days had been a long time ago. It was really a lot less difficult to do when you had a cause to believe in.

The air crackled with rivalry and the potential for swift backstabbing.
Geoffrey hadn’t sensed anything like it since his last academic conference.

The poor didn’t have them and so the rich flaunted them, the larger and more conspicuous the better.

She had almost dared ask, but was perhaps too fearful of hearing something she could not refute.

The Fascists got what they deserved," Floyd said. "My husband lived long enough to see those monsters come to come to power. He saw through their lies and promises, but he also knew that they spoke to something nasty and squalid in the human spirit. Something in all of us. We want to hate those who are not like us. All we need is an excuse, a whisper in the ear.

Crime is an adaptive organism. Squeeze one niche and it moves into another.

But at least you cared. At least you were ready to do something." "This little mess," Auger said, "is all because of people who were ready to do something. People like me, who always know when they're right and everyone else is wrong. Maybe what we need is a few less of us.

Who was it who said that a wise man speaks when he has something to say, but a fool speaks because he must?

The universe always feels old, though. That’s a universal truth, a universal fact of life. It felt old for her, already cobwebbed by history. Hard for us to grasp, I know. Human civilisation, it’s just the last scratch on the last scratch on the last scratch, on the last layer of everything. We’re noise. Dirt. We haven’t begun to leave a trace.

I’ll argue to the death against stupid legislation, but some rules exist for a reason.

Are you threatening me, shatterling”
“No, just indulging in a little wishful thinking.

She was usually caught with her back to us, a distant figure standing on some cliff or high building with one hand on her hip and another shielding her eyes from the sun, lost in the rapture of scale and scenery, drunk on the very idea of being human, a monkey who had hit the big time.

The Jugglers store patterns, but they seldom show any sign of comprehending actual content. We’re dealing with a mindless biological archiving system, a museum without a curator.

Kanu closed his eyes, opened them again, hoping that the world would have done the decent thing and changed into a less problematic version of itself.

“There’s still hope.”
But a small, private voice said: there’s hope, and there’s desperation.