Alastair Reynolds Quotes

A splendidly inept thing," Sylveste said, nodding despite himself. "What?" "The human capacity for grief. It just isn't capable of providing an adequate emotional response once the dead exceed a few dozen in number. And it doesn't just level off—it just gives up, resets itself to zero. Admit it. None of us feel a damn about these people.

It seemed that she had not so much misjudged the woman as assigned her to completely the wrong species.

I was going to call it a mistake, but you could argue that there are no mistakes in war, only fortunate and less fortunate events.

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

You can hardly blame them." "Assuming stupidity is an inherited trait, then no, I can't.

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.

She wondered if she could put a dart in his eye. It would not kill him, but it might take the edge off his cockiness.

It's all in the fine print. You should read it sometime." "When I'm gripped by existential boredom," Khouri said, "I might try it.

Are you sharpness personified?" Khouri poured herself a few final sips of coffee and then left the rest of it on the stove for when she got back. Coffee was her only vice, one acquired in her soldiering days on the Edge. The trick was to reach a knife-edge of alertness, but not be so buzzing that she could not point the weapon without shaking. "I think I've reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level, if that's what you mean.

In its purest distillation beauty had always been merciless.

Something worse." After a silence Dreyfus said: "If there's one thing I've learned, it's that there's always something worse." "Yes. Odd that that should be what keeps us going, but there it is. We take our comforts where we may.

Imagine a permanent, shivering gloom, and never a moment without hunger, thirst and exhaustion. Imagine the constant fear of suffering illness or injury." "You've just described nine-tenths of human history.

All of it is physics, though, whether you are studying starlings or quarks.

There’s nothing like a stupid, accidental death to remind you of the supreme futility of everything.

And what keeps you going, exactly?" "Insulting my friends. Making new ones, to compensate for the ones I already insulted just a bit too much. You'd be surprised how much work those activities demand of me—it's practically a full-time occupation." "In fairness, you're getting very good at it.