Ian McDonald Quotes

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.

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.

He had sworn on his father's honour, his mother's life, his brother's masculinity, his sister's purity and his prophet's beard that he would never set foot there again. God, knowing people, thinks little of honour or purity or even life, but vows made on his prophet he loves to confound.

At some point it will inevitably crash again: as weapons of mass destruction go, unrestricted market economies are among the more subtle but sure.

“Hey!” the people cried in their dreams. “Give us back our ghosts!” for ghosts are as much a part of a community as its plumbing or its library, for how can a community be without its memories?

This is now a matter of national security, sir. This is Franz Kafka, is what it is. Tom Hanks looks at chair-rocker, who writes the name down. He's a Czech writer, Thomas Lull says. He's been dead a hundred years. I was attempting irony. Sir, please do not attempt irony. This is a most serious issue.

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.

It was not socialism or communism or Islamism. It was romanticism. There is no more incandescent passion than love in a time of revolution.

These songs were the true names of things, spoken by the soul, so easily buried under the little busynesses of everyman everyday.

The elephants fight but the rats go about their business.

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.

Any aeai [A.I., artificial intelligence ] smart enough to pass a Turing test is smart enough to know to fail it.

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

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.

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