Peter F. Hamilton · 1223 pages
Rating: (26.2K votes)
“You convinced yourselves we're just a bunch of regular lads who got a bad break in life. Anything else would have cracked your dream open and made you face reality. Illusion is easy. Illusion is the loser's way out. Your way. ”
“The balance is the penalty of being human: the danger of allowing yourself to feel. For this we walk a narrow path high above rocky ground. On one side we have the descent into animalism, on the other a godhead delusion. Both pulling at us, both tempting. But without these forces tugging at your psyche, stirring it into conflict, you can never love. They awaken us, you see, these warring sides, they arouse our passion.”
“Life alone is precious, but conscious thought is the greatest gift the universe offers.”
“He had used drugs and nanonic supplements to compensate at first, then supplements became replacements, with bones exchanged for carbon-fibre struts. Electrical consumption supplanted food intake. The final transition was his skin, replacing the eczema-ridden epidermis with a smooth ochre silicon membrane. Warlow didn’t need a spacesuit to work in the vacuum, he could survive for over three weeks without a power and oxygen recharge. His facial features had become purely cosmetic, a crude mannequin-like caricature of human physiognomy, although there was an inlet valve at the back of his throat for fluid intake. There was no hair, and he certainly didn’t bother with clothes. Sex was something he lost in his fifties.”
“weapons science was always kept very close to the government’s chest, receiving the most funds and the least publicity.”
“Kelly was starting to have serious second thoughts about the whole assignment. Like all war correspondents, she supposed. Being on the ground was very different to sitting in the office anticipating being on the ground. Especially with the appearance of that red cloud.”
“As if we didn't have enough weapons already. But that's human nature, we've always got to go one better, to increase the terror another notch.”
“Interpretation through the filters of ideology has always been one of our race's curses.”
“Resolution, the ability and determination to see things through to the end. However unexpected or disappointing that end turns out to be.”
“Funny how different life could be, so many things that make you take one route instead of another. If only we could live them all.”
“It is the others you must convince, the ignorant masses, yet paradoxically, they are the ones hardest for you to reach. Theirs are the minds which, thanks to circumstance, have set and hardened against new concepts and ideas from an early age.”
“The sun was boiling, the swaying was uncomfortable, the horse stank. She felt wonderful”
“Eko brushed a tear from her eye, and Immo jeered at her, but father held up a hand. "Never mock a tender heart," he said.”
“Look at me," John gasped. "I cannot remember the last time I allowed
myself to be so happy. I smile all day long without knowing why. I climbed a bloody tree, vaulted through your window, and here I am—laughing.It's the middle of the night, and yet here I am
with you. Dancing at midnight, holding perfection in my arms." -John Blackwood to Arabella Blydon”
“But my foreknowledge must not encroach upon their free will. "In order not to impair human liberty, I will be ignorant of what I know, I will thicken upon my eyes the veils I have pierced, and in my blind clearsightedness I will let myself be surprised by what I have foreseen.”
“56 percent of learned information is forgotten within an hour of being encoded. By the time one day has passed, another 10 percent is gone. A month after the information is learned, 80 percent of it has vanished. How”
“I just hope God doesn't get all the credit for bringing me home, because I sure hitchhiked a hell of a long ways and walked my frozen feet off to get here.”
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