“It looked like a biology lesson for gods, or a snapshot of the kind of pornography which might be enjoyed by sentient planets.”
“I don't know." That was typical Sajaki; like all the genuinely clever people Sylveste had met he knew better than to feign understanding where none existed.”
“It's an ancient technique known as lying, Khouri.”
“You didn't weld it shut or anything like that?"
"Yes, stupid me, I forgot.”
“I think the deeper we go, the less likelihood we'll have of being recognised as something unwanted. It's like the human body - the greatest density of pain receptors lies in the skin.”
“The cards always look different when it's your turn to play them; loaded with subtly different possibilities.”
“Volyova felt as if her brain consisted of a room full of precocious schoolchildren: individually bright, and—if only they would pool themselves—capable of shattering insights. But some of those schoolchildren were not paying attention; they were staring dreamily out of the window, ignoring her protestations to focus on the present, because they found their own obsessions more intellectually attractive than the dull curriculum she was intent on dispensing.”
“Believe me, when you're dealing with infectious alien mind parasites, I always find primitive is best." Then, calmly, almost as if it were a recognised form of verbal punctuation, she took aim with the needler and gutted a rat which had dared to stray into the corridor.”
“It's called optimism — but I’m losing the hang of it fast.”
“I think I’ve reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level, if that’s what you mean.”
“Nightside, cities glistened in chains, and a spray of tinkertoy habitats girdled the planet. Gossamer starbridges reached from the equator towards orbit.”
“You're confident he'll have found him, then?"
"Well, no. I didn't sat that."
"If there's one thing I hate," Volyova said, looking coldly at the other Triumvir, "it's mindless optimism.”
“The cards always look different when it’s your turn to play them; loaded with subtly different possibilities.”
“The human capacity for grief. It just isn't capable of providing an adequate emotional response once the dead exceed a few dozen in number. And it doesn't just level off—it just gives up, resets itself to zero. Admit it. None of us feel a damn about these people.”
“Khouri had never really given much thought to the slowness of light. There was nothing in the universe that moved faster . . . but, as she now saw, it was glacial compared to the speed that would be needed to keep their love alive.”
“Dimly--at first wary that it was merely a dislodged fragment of the dream--she remembered Resurgam. And then, slowly, events returned, not as a tidal wave, or even as as landslide, but as a slow, squelching slippage: a disembowelment of the past.”
“You look older, son.” “Yes, well, some of us have to get on with the business of being alive in the entropic universe.”
“The human capacity for grief. It just isn’t capable of providing an adequate emotional response once the dead exceed a few dozen in number. And it doesn’t just level off—it just gives up, resets itself to zero.”
“For a moment I think we were turned into information, and that in that instant we were linked to every other piece of information ever known; every thought ever thought, or at least ever captured by the light.”
“Gravity ruled, and gravity did not take into account circumstances, or the unfairness of things, or listen to eleventh-hour petitions before reluctantly repealing its laws. Gravity crushed,”
“Weyl curvature tensor . . . but consciousness was no”
“She hesitated, aware that an ill-judged phrase might anger Triumvir Hegazi; not that she particularly cared. Dared she call it the Melding Plague, now that the Yellowstoners had given it a name? Perhaps that would be unwise.”
“It was better to live; better to carry a memory of a memory, than suffer the vast burden of knowing. He was not meant to think like a god.”
“The flare-watch in East Nekhebet had picked up an energy pulse, much brighter than anything seen previously. Briefly, there was the worrying possibility that Delta Pavonis was about to repeat the flare which had wiped out the Amarantin: the vast coronal mass ejection known as the Event. But closer examination revealed that the flare did not originate from the star, but rather from something several light-hours beyond it, on the edge of the system.”
“Still, it was vision, or at least vision’s idiot cousin.”
“That she had loved Sylveste because he was such a self-important bastard and made something noble of being a self-important bastard, did it with such utter aplomb that it became a kind of virtue, like the wearing of sackcloth”
“But the trouble with simulations is that they put up with far too much shit.”
“them were spectres uncertain of each other’s reality. They , held each other for what seemed like many more hours than the one they had been allocated; not because time dragged, but because for now time was unimportant; it was in abeyance, and it seemed as if it could be held that way by the act of will alone.”
“I haven’t needed anything big enough from you to justify being pleasant, and I doubt I ever will.”
“Behold the wedding gun,’ the Ordinator said, holding the box aloft.”
“The challenge for us is this: How can we ensure that, when we try to help others, we do so as effectively as possible?”
“There are perhaps millions who are sitting on the couch saying, “I’m gonna…” They’ll do it when their finances are perfect, when their children are perfectly grown and stable, when they’ve achieved seniority on the job or some other life marker. Your life will never be perfect. Parts of it will be, at times. You will always be juggling and adjusting in some area of your life. Step away from the couch sitters who are awaiting the single perfect day to begin living their dream. You can choose to live your dream every day if you just take the first step.”
“It's amazing to see the beauty of the world. It's so beautiful and so brutal. It's a reminder that every second of life is precious.”
“Agora você sozinho. Nada de medo que você está ficando um homenzinho. Meu”
“You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.” —INDIRA GANDHI”
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