Martha Wells Quotes

Humans have a bad tendency to use weapons unnecessarily and indiscriminately. Of the many times I had been shot, a depressingly large percentage of hits had come from clients who were trying to “help” me.

I’ve had clients who thought they needed an absurd level of security. (And I’m talking absurd even by my standards, and my code was developed by a bond company known for intense xenophobic paranoia, tempered only by desperate greed.) I’ve also had clients who thought they didn’t need any security at all, right up until something ate them.

It was very dramatic, like something out of a historical adventure serial. Also correct in every aspect except for all the facts, like something out of a historical adventure serial.

I don't want to be human.
Dr. Mensah said, "That's not an attitude a lot of humans are going to understand. We tend to think that because a bot or a construct looks human, its ultimate goal would be to become human."
"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

Disinformation, which is the same as lying but for some reason has a different name, is the top tactic in corporate negotiation/warfare.

This lobby was on multiple levels and had large square biozones depicting different ecologies, with furniture arranged around them. It looked nice, inviting humans to sit around and discuss proprietary information in the hotel’s choked feed so the hotel could record it and sell it to the highest bidder.

The company is like an evil vending machine, you put money in and it does what you want, unless somebody else puts more money in and tells it to stop.

Real humans don’t act like the ones in the media.

The station approach traffic was heavy, and we were showing a twenty-seven-minute docking delay. Twenty-seven minutes was more than enough time for me to do something stupid.

Hard work really did make you improve; who knew?

Possibly I was overthinking this. I do that; it’s the anxiety that comes with being a part-organic murderbot. The upside was paranoid attention to detail. The downside was also paranoid attention to detail.

This was another reason I didn’t like human security consultants. Some of them enjoyed their job too much.

I know that’s actually not a permanent solution and pretending bad things aren’t happening is not a great survival strategy in the long run, but there was nothing I could do about it now.

They were all annoying and deeply inadequate humans, but I didn’t want to kill them. Okay, maybe a little.

There needs to be an error code that means “I received your request but decided to ignore you.”