Michael Swanwick Quotes

It was none of your foul science. I am an occultist."
"A distinction in terminology only. Our means may differ, but we employ identical techniques. First, render the brain open to suggestion. We use magnetic resonance, while you employ drugs, ritual, sex, terror, or some combination thereof. Then, when the brain is susceptible, imprint it with new behavior patterns. We use holotherapeutic viruses as the message carriers; you eat a rat. Finally, reinforce the new pattern in your daily life. Our methods are probably identical there. The skill is extremely old; people were being reprogrammed long before machines.

Out of doors on a moonless night?" Mette sneered. "Only fools, footpads, and astrologers stray where there is no light.

Faust had no delusions of Heavenly aid. An involved and benevolent deity would have helped him long years ago when, young, he had yearned for knowledge as achingly as now and with far fewer stains on his soul.

Tell me! What do you think of life? What do you think of ambition? What do you think of science, of learning, of love, of fame, of glory, of aspiration?"
"I think...that those are all very different things."
"You are wrong. They are all one thing—a cunt."
"Sir?"
"A cunt! Consider: The cunt is a nasty, ugly, filthy thing. Yet we desire it so greatly as to be willing to suffer any indignity to attain it. For the sake of it we labor and preen and whisper sugary words. We go to the theatre with flowers in our arms, climb over back walls by moonlight, write sonnets, jump out of windows with our trousers in our hands, give dangerous men their choice of weapons. We build love-nests for it sake, and cities, and civilizations. It is our all, our only, our ideal. It has created us and made us great. Such is life, such is ambition, such is science, learning, love, fame, glory, and aspiration. The Eternal Cunt," he said significantly, "draws us onward.

For all that she’d had no great expectations for it, sex was turning out to be even more squalid, tawdry, and cynical than she had suspected it would.

Can you really kill the Goddess?" Jane asked.
"You stupid gobbet of flesh! Don't you understand yet? There is no Goddess."
"No," Jane cried. "You said yourself—"
"I lied," the dragon said with a fearful complacency. "Everyone you have ever met has lied to you. Life exists, and all who live are born to suffer. The best moments are fleeting and bought with the coin of exquisite torment. All attachments end. All loved ones die. All that you value passes away. In such a vexatious existence laughter is madness and joy is folly. Shall we accept that it all happens for no reason, with no cause? That there is nobody to blame but ourselves but that accepting the responsibility is pointless for doing so cannot ease, defer, or deaden the pain? Not likely! It is so much more comforting to erect a straw figure on which to blame it all.
"Some bow down before the Goddess and others curse her every name. There is not a fart's difference between the two approaches. They cling to the fiction of the Goddess because admitting the alternative is unbearable.

“Machines!” Wyeth snorted. “Machines are the easiest things in the universe to outwit because they’re predictable—that’s their function, to be predictable, to do exactly what they’re designed for, time after time.

Urban life was thus founded upon the principle of deliberately confounding those who were not a part of it. Civilization was a strategy of exclusion.

You are still infested with hope. You think there is a life worth living somewhere, and that some combination of action, restraint, knowledge, and luck will save you, if only you can get the mix right. Well, I've got news for you. Right here, right now—this is as good as it gets."
"Things will get better!"
"Have they ever?" The dragon's contempt was palpable. The cabin hatch hissed open. "Go. Return to your dormitory room and enjoy your present. Come back when you've grown large enough to look upon futility without flinching. Come back when you've despaired and moved beyond despair to vengefulness. Come back when you've decided to stop lying to yourself.

Faust wallowed heavily over on his side, presenting a pitiable face to Wagner. “Never fall in love,” he said. “She will take lovers, and some of them will be more experienced and capable than you. I tell you this as a friend—there are dishes once tasted, a woman is loath to do without.”

I have no need to expose myself to your flummery," Mette said with dignity. "I believe in order that I may know. I do not know in order to believe."
"I marvel at your spite. Of what possible benefit can this willful ignorance be to you?

Your girlfriend is none too tightly wrapped, if you’ll forgive me for saying so. I don’t think she’s actually crazy, but—I been watching her a long time, and it is my considered opinion that she is none too clear on where the line between fantasy and reality should be drawn.

Money can always be traced. It leaves a trail of slime behind it wherever it goes.

The secret to successful scrying was to realize that the future was not fixed and there was no way of predicting it. None. All one could do was to identify what already existed unacknowledged. Lovers pledged themselves to each other long before their first kiss. Murder was implicit in friendship. A carcinoma that looked like a speck of dust on the X-ray spelled death. So much of what appeared to be random event was simply the working out of consequences.

He was accustomed to questioning an essentially impassive universe. The physical world might be maddeningly close-lipped about its secrets, but it didn’t lie, and it never actively tried to deceive you.