Michael Swanwick Quotes

It was not possible for her to rejoin the unthinking world, becoming as she had been before, sleepily and smugly ignorant of consequences. There were thoughts that once thought, could not be unthought.

That is the true measure of love, you see, the evil one will stoop to for its sake...

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.

What the common man calls Evil, he once told me, is nothing more than the fear of one’s own potential.

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.

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.”

Paid off? Do you mean bribery?"
"That is, umm, not an entirely pleasant word for it." Dreschler's doughy face took on a pained expression. "It is more in the nature of an advance payment to ensure the labor force will be satisfied with the negotiated wage schedules.

(There are three stages to a battle: First you’re bored. Then you’re terrified. Then you’re dead. Each is necessary, and they must all come in the proper order.)

Let me explain to you," the Horned One said, "the nature of history."
"What?"
"The first thing you need to know is that history happens almost exclusively in the dark...Here is your second lesson: History is that which cannot be prevented...Here is your third and final lesson: History is simply life with all the bits any sane person might care to experience left out.

Still, it was no easy thing to flirt in German.

Good men are dying at this very moment to protect you, your factories, your possessions, and all civilization."
"Good men are dying every moment," Gretchen replied coldly, "somewhere. Since they did not ask my leave to do so, I feel no particular obligation toward them.

The law," Hoess suggested, "might not be entirely unhelpful here.

There was so much going on, and so little he cared to know about!

Margarete saw, and disapproved, and understood. It was perfectly natural that Youth, being given a new and revolutionary truth, should embrace it too eagerly, should defend it too loudly, should proclaim it in the extremest terms and without regard for the sensibilities of others. Natural, too, that Age, vested as it was in things as they had always been, should reject the truth as unsettling and dangerous. In the ace of such strong emotions, the only sane thing to do therefore was to embrace the truth circumspectly, to hide one’s new allegiance from one’s elders.

Our records must be scrupulous, whether they show what we want them to show or not.