Alastair Reynolds Quotes

But you can be sure there are pockets of wealth and influence, and I'm willing to wager that a few people are wealthier and more influential than they were before." "That's always the way with disasters," I said. "What?" "They're never bad news for everyone. Something nasty always rises to the top.

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

Don't you agree with me?" "On some distant theoretical level, just possibly.

I learnt the true meaning of what was euphemistically described as close-quarters combat. No line-of-sight particle-beam weapons now; no delayed-detonation nano-munitions. What close-quarters combat meant was something which would have been infinitely more recognisable to a soldier of a thousand years earlier: the screaming fury of human beings packed so close together that the only effective way to kill each other was with sharpened metal weapons: bayonets and daggers, or with hands around each other’s throats; fingers pressed into each other’s eye-sockets. The only way to survive was to disengage all higher brain-functions and regress to an animal state of mind.
So I did. And in doing so, I learned a deeper truth about war. She punished those who flirted with her by making them like herself. Once you opened the door to the animal, there was no shutting it.

His parents had abdicated responsibility to an illusion.

Khouri did not need to be told that Hades was a neutron star, any more than she needed to be told that there was no such thing as a safe close encounter with one. You either kept away or you died; those were the rules, and there was no force in the universe capable of negating them. Gravity ruled, and gravity did not take into account circumstances, or the unfairness of things, or listen to eleventh-hour petitions before reluctantly repealing its laws. Gravity crushed, and near the surface of a neutron star gravity crushed absolutely, until diamond flowed like water; until a mountain collapsed into a millionth of its height.

For someone admitting guilt she sounded remarkably void of repentance.

I imagine you feel insignificant," Sajaki said, almost as if he had been listening in on the conversation. "Well; you're justified in feeling that way. You are insignificant. That's the majesty of this place. Would you choose it any other way?

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.

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

Haven't you ever heard of morale-building?" Khouri had asked. "Heard of it," Volyova said. "Don't happen to agree with it. Would you rather be happy and dead, or scared and alive?

I don't like this at all," Hegazi said. "Believe me," Sylveste said, "you're about to like it a lot less.

For whatever reason, I am now fully conscious. Perhaps all beta-levels are capable of this, or perhaps my sheer connectional complexity ensured that I exceeded some state of critical mass. I have no idea. All I know is that I think, and therefore I’m exceedingly angry.

“I don’t know.” That was typical Sajaki; like all the genuinely clever people Sylveste had met he knew better than to feign understanding where none existed.

You look older, son." "Yes, well, some of us have to get on with the business of being alive in the entropic universe.