Alastair Reynolds Quotes

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

“How are the internal complications, anyway? Aren’t the other branches of government getting a little suspicious about all these machinations?”
“Let’s just say that one or two discreet assassinations may still have to be performed,” Khouri said.

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.

There's a catch," Skellsgard said. "Another one? But of course there is. You know, I'm thinking I should start a collection.

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

Auger could not help marvelling at the experience of being inside the ALS sphere and seeing her world as it should have been. This was an earth that had never known nuclear war, or runaway climatic catastrophe, or smart weather, or a Nanocaust. The sight of it made her want to weep. No image had ever come close to the heartbreaking beauty of this small blue world, a beauty all the more acute now that she knew how exquisitely fragile it was. It was the beauty of a butterfly’s wing.

The only thing driving us on was greed.
Fucking greed. The only thing in the universe stronger than fear.

They’re your children. The more you try to force them to be like you, the more they’re going to flare off in different directions like wild fireworks, the more they’re going to surprise and disappoint you.

I’m just saying that right now we could all use a degree of perspective. Because this is not the end of the world.

If I’ve learned one thing in my long existence, it’s that hesitation gets you nowhere.

It was a numbers game, not a guaranteed method of avoiding being killed, but Clavain had been a soldier long enough to know that this was, ultimately, what most combat situations boiled down to.

It was bad, but it was some other slightly less piquant flavour of bad.

There were choices to be made, harder choices than I would have liked, and I realised that I had been neglecting them because of their very difficulty.

Humanity is an assemblage of information-processing entities, and in that regard you have potential.

The question is: do you trust me?" "Sometimes." Bella smiled. "That's exactly the right attitude: trust your leaders, but be careful not to trust them too much.