Ian McDonald Quotes

It was fate, and being angry at fate was as futile as being angry at the weather.

Ayşe Erkoç learned long ago that the secret of doing anything illicit in Istanbul is to do it in full public gaze in the clear light of day. No one ever questions the legitimacy of the blatant.

Profit, Empire, Industry. What was a dead lake, a few poisoned rivers, a few slagged hillsides? Priorities, that was what it was about. Priorities and Progress.

Ghosts? Pah. We are the most substantial things in the world, the foundations of the present. We are memories.

How proud he would have felt [...] to have seen those seeds germinate into a Muslim nation, a Land of the Pure. How it would have broken his heart to see that Land of the Pure become a medieval theocracy and then rip itself apart in tribal factionalism. The Word of God prophecies from the barrel of an AK47.

His theory of golf is, never play any sport that requires you to dress as your grandfather.

Once muddying subjectivities are removed from the issue, the decision becomes clear.

She had trapped the bird of salvation, sung to it, tamed it and wrung its neck.

Legends should stay legends; otherwise they just become history, when the natural course of things is the other way around, from history to legend.

Only miscalculation could kill you in interstellar war. The equations were hard but they were fair.

She had not won a clean victory. Tinkering with time and history offended her political sensibilities. History was written in the stones. It was not a numinous thing to be tossed sparkling in the air to lie where it fell. She did not like to think of her life and world as a mere mutability of potentials.

That old saw about a problem shared being a problem halved? Damnable lie. A problem shared is a problem doubled.

A chilly piety leaked into the air.

The laws of economics are subject to the laws of physics. The physical processes that govern this planet and the continued life upon it place as stringent an upper limit on economic growth as the speed of light does on our knowledge of the universe.

She knew what she was now. She had a purpose. Freedom was still hers, but it was a purposeful freedom. She would seek responsibility, for freedom without responsibility was worthless, and to that duality she would add power, for responsibility without power was impotence. She would go to Wisdom and enthrone the trinity of liberties within herself.