Charles E. Gannon Quotes

“You think she’ll make it?”
“She should. Unless something else goes wrong.”
Tsaami’s tone was sour. “Caine: this is a battlefield. Something else always goes wrong.”
To which Riordan had no ready response. After all, Karam was right.

Aren't you even going to wish me luck?"
"We do not believe in luck, Caine Riordan. However, I wish enlightenment unto you. In every passing second.

And over the many months that followed, as Caine crept through both terrestrial and alien undergrowth on missions to reclaim some of the autonomy humanity had lost, he learned and relearned the prime lesson in common to all the shocks:
That all assumptions, like all plans, or never more than a second away from a catastrophic collision with reality.

In the face of crisis, I will choose unauthorized action over disastrous inaction.

Look: nations screw up like people do; sometimes they mean well, sometimes they’re selfish or delusional bitches on a spree, and sometimes they just plain make mistakes. But the megacorporations don’t make mistakes; if they do damage, it’s because they like the cost-to-benefit ratios, dead innocents notwithstanding. Nations are bulls in the global china shop; corporations are sharks.

If there are any competent journalists here, I’m ready for their inquiries.

What gives with him? Does he take jerk pills?

It was the oldest, most primal fear of humankind, inculcated by eons of brutal lessons which, titrated down into their purest form, became age’s invariable advice to youth: beware the things and places you do not know.Because out there, beyond the flickering ring of the tribal fire, on the unlit streets of concrete cities, in the unending depths of space—there lay an unquantifiable, unbounded potential for death.

Stupid creatures tend to be stubborn creatures.

If, fourteen years ago, he had entertained secret hopes of leaving a discernible, enduring mark on the legacy of humankind, he was now fully disabused of them.

Your rabble's one unifying cry will be that there must be retribution. Most will call this 'justice.' A few of the most intemperate will also be the most honest; they will call it 'revenge.'

I guess that, living in a sanitized world, you’ve forgotten this basic lesson: if you want to stay free or stay alive, never play by your opponent’s rules. Particularly when your opponent is more powerful than you are. Do the unexpected. Turn on your pursuer. Attack the attacker.

You mean, control my instincts?"
"No, most of your species can learn to do that. The true challenge is whether you can control your predisposition to assume moral equivalencies where none exist.

He is young—well, younger—and idealistic. Which is to say, foolish.

Most of my professors can’t see the wider forest of meaning because they’ve become obsessed with a few mostly meaningless trees.