Quotes from Children of Time

“That is the problem with ignorance. You can never truly know the extent of what you are ignorant about.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“At last the words fought themselves free, 'Promise me--'
'Nothing,' she snapped instantly. 'No promises. The universe promises us nothing; I extend the same to you.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“You can never know. That is the problem with ignorance. You can never truly know the extent of what you are ignorant about.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“conclusions are a matter of extrapolated logic based on her best comprehension of the principles the universe has revealed to her.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“The ice had been retreating. Humanity had sprung back swiftly, expanded, fought its small wars, re-industrialized, tripping constantly over reminders of what the species had previously achieved.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“A life lived entirely at the whim of another is no life at all.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“Alpash moved to go, and for a moment Holsten was going to stop him, to ask that impossible question that historians can never ask, regarding the things they study: What is it like to be you? A question nobody can step far enough out of their own frame of reference to answer.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“It was not such a long way to the weightlessness of the needle’s hollow interior. She had her choice then: either towards the engine core, where Sering had no doubt taken steps to ensure that he would not be disturbed; or away. Away, in a very final sense. She could override anything Sering had done. She had full confidence in the superiority of her abilities. It would take time, though. If she cast herself that way down the needle, towards Sering and his traps and locked barriers, then time would be something she would not have the benefit of.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“From her viewpoint, engines to accelerate her to most of the speed of light were no more than pedestrian tools to move her about a universe that Earth’s biosphere was about to inherit. Because humanity may be fragile in ways we cannot dream, so we cast our net wide and then wider . . .”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“She has improved the lives of her species in a dozen separate ways, for she has a mind that can see answers to problems others did not even realize were holding them back.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“This is the future. This is where mankind takes its next great step. This is where we become gods.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“If they were of any quality or calibre, then they would ascend by their own virtues. Not if there was no structure that they could possibly climb. Not if all the structure that exists was designed to disenfranchise them. Portia,”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“Are they wondering if Lain and I will save them by being here? Because, if so, they weren’t listening to Guyen closely enough before.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“The act of courtship is consummated as a public ritual, where the hopeful males – in their moment of prominence – perform in front of a peer group, or even the whole city, before the female chooses her partner and accepts his package of sperm. She may then kill and eat him, which is thought to be a great honour for the victim, although even Portia suspects that the males do not quite see it that way.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“It was not such a long way to the weightlessness of the needle’s hollow interior. She had her choice then: either towards the engine core, where Sering had no doubt taken steps to ensure that he would not be disturbed; or away. Away, in a very final sense.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“Doctor Avrana Kern awoke to a dozen complex feeds of information, none of which helped her restore her memories of what had just happened or why she was groggily returning to consciousness in a cold-sleep unit. She could not open her eyes; her entire body was cramping and there was nothing in her mental space except the overkill of information assailing her, every system of the Sentry Pod clamouring to report.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“Negotiations with the locals have gone sufficiently well –now that Portia and her party have established their superiority –and the incumbents have lent the three travellers a male to serve as a guide in the lands to the north.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“Why should we be made thus, to improve and improve, unless it is to aspire? To”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“Her attention had drifted a little and, by the time she realized what he had said, the words had passed on to the crew. She registered suddenly a murmur of concerned messages between them, and even simple spoken words whispered between those closest to her. Doctor Mercian meanwhile sent her an alert on another channel: ‘Why is Sering in the engine core?”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“If they were of any quality or calibre, then they would ascend by their own virtues. Not if there was no structure that they could possibly climb. Not if all the structure that exists was designed to disenfranchise them.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“Back in Seven Trees, the remaining local males are hard at work. Some have fled, but most of the evacuees are female. Males are replaceable, always underfoot, always too numerous. Many have been instructed to remain in the city until the last, on pain of death.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“It took a long time to work out how to do it, but in the end she was only information, after all. Everything is only information, if you have sufficient capacity to encompass it.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“I want to try something a bit lateral,’ Holsten explained. ‘Is it likely to get us blown up ahead of schedule?’ ‘I don’t think so.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“Life is not perfect, individuals will always be flawed, but empathy – the sheer inability to see those around them as anything other than people too – conquers all, in the end.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“What you ask is unnatural, she tells him sternly, controlling herself. There is nothing about what we do that is natural. If we prized the natural we would still be hunting Spitters in the wilderness, or falling prey to the jaws of ants, instead of mastering our world. We have made a virtue of the unnatural. She does”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“I’m trying to keep track of all the ways this venture is likely to kill me but, yes, that’s one of them.’ She looked up at him without flinching. ‘Seriously, I am more concerned about that satellite. You need to cut us free right now. You need me isolating the ship’s systems so that thing can’t just walk in and take over.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

“Mankind brooks no competitors, She has explained to them – not even its own reflection. For”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, quote from Children of Time

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“Death comes for all of us. For us, for our patients: it is our fate as living, breathing, metabolizing organisms. Most lives are lived with passivity toward death -- it's something that happens to you and those around you. But Jeff and I had trained for years to actively engage with death, to grapple with it, like Jacob with the angel, and, in so doing, to confront the meaning of a life. We had assumed an onerous yoke, that of mortal responsibility. Our patients' lives and identities may be in our hands, yet death always wins. Even if you are perfect, the world isn't. The secret is to know that the deck is stacked, that you will lose, that your hands or judgment will slip, and yet still struggle to win for your patients. You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.”
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