Alastair Reynolds Quotes

You owned the world when you were a young man, felt it like it was fashioned to fit your hands. You could do anything with it you wanted to. But the world kept changing, and sooner or later there came a day when it didn’t feel like you were the one the world was interested in any more.

She was pointing into the empty, angel-less heavens beyond.
Everything else. The universe.

The new regime which had succeeded his after the coup had become as fragmentary as the old, in the time-honoured way of all revolutions.

I'll survive," Floyd said. "I'm a private detective. If I don't get clouted on the head at least once a week, I'm not doing my job properly.

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.

We're pushing into deep space now—Trans-Neptunian, the inner boundary of the Kuiper belt, and we've even got machines in the Oort cloud. That's where it gets stickier. If we're going to do anything useful out there, we'll need smart machines and lots of them. Machines that break right through the existing cognition thresholds, into post-artilect computation. Human-level thinkers that can live with us, be our equals as well as our workers." "You're not sounding any less scary than you were five minutes ago," Geoffrey said. "Look, in a thousand years, the difference between people and machines…It's going to seem about as relevant as the difference between Protestants and Catholics: some ludicrous relic of Dark Age thinking.

How long have we been friends, Dan?" "I wouldn't exactly call it friendship; more a kind of mutual parasitism.

The mere fact that there could be danger in this is fascination in itself; almost an incentive to push further. That’s how you feel, isn’t it? Every argument they could use against you would only strengthen your resolve. Because knowledge makes you hungry, and it’s a hunger you can’t resist, even if you know that what you’re feasting on could kill you.

They might have their airships and machine guns, but superstition wasn’t something that went away just because you had engines and bullets.

All her concerns, all her fears, began to feel trifling. It was just a trick of perspective, really, seeing things as they truly were.

She’d walked a delicate line with commendable skill.
But sometimes the best case wasn’t good enough.

But sanity, Vasko decided, was like the pattern of lights he could see through his cabin window. In almost any direction the only way to travel was into darkness, and there was a lot more darkness than light.

I’m not on the side of elephants or people, Goma. I’m on the side against stupidity.

The simple fact was that she no longer hated them as a matter of principle. It was also a source of shameful amazement that she could ever have wasted so much energy on groundless prejudice, when acceptance and tolerance would have been the easier, even the lazier, course.

Oh, I’m not perfect—not by a long stretch. I just make the rest of you look bad.