Alastair Reynolds Quotes

““I gather you were all too busy killing each other.”
“That’s a fairly reductive summary of our history, but I don’t suppose it’s too far from the truth.””

Source: Short fiction, The Iron Tactician (2016), p. 630

““Only trying to make conversation, friend.”
“Don’t bother—it’s an overrated activity at the best of times.””

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 21 (p. 359).

“The central defect of the human mind,” Custine said, “is its unfortunate habit of seeing patterns where none exist. Of course, that is also its chief asset.”

A Spy in Europa (p. 104)
Short fiction, Galactic North (2006)

“Khouri did not need to be told that Hades was a neutron star, any more than she needed to be told that there was no such thing as a safe close encounter with one. You either kept away or you died; those were the rules, and there was no force in the universe capable of negating them. 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, and near the surface of a neutron star gravity crushed absolutely, until diamond flowed like water; until a mountain collapsed into a millionth of its height.”

“But sometimes a very dangerous one.”
Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 12 (p. 178)

“Memo to himself: the one way to make people panic was to warn them not to.”

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 37 (p. 554).

Alastair Reynolds Quotes about the trip

“You’ve been good to me, Inigo. But I really am like the weather. You can admire me, even love me, in your way, but I can’t love you back. To me you’re like a photograph. I can see right through you, examine you from all angles. You amuse me. But you don’t have enough depth ever to fascinate me.”

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 4 (p. 56)

“Maps had never really been his thing, even during his days under Scorpio in Chasm City. There, it had hardly mattered. Blood’s motto had always been that if you needed a map to find your way around a neighbourhood, you were already in trouble.”

Weather (p. 159)
Short fiction, Galactic North (2006)

““But you can be sure there are pockets of wealth and influence, and I’m willing to wager that a few people are wealthier and more influential than they were before.”
“That’s always the way with disasters,” I said.
“What?”
“They’re never bad news for everyone. Something nasty always rises to the top.””

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 18 (pp. 255-256)

“I learnt the true meaning of what was euphemistically described as close-quarters combat. No line-of-sight particle-beam weapons now; no delayed-detonation nano-munitions. What close-quarters combat meant was something which would have been infinitely more recognisable to a soldier of a thousand years earlier: the screaming fury of human beings packed so close together that the only effective way to kill each other was with sharpened metal weapons: bayonets and daggers, or with hands around each other’s throats; fingers pressed into each other’s eye-sockets. The only way to survive was to disengage all higher brain-functions and regress to an animal state of mind.
So I did. And in doing so, I learned a deeper truth about war. She punished those who flirted with her by making them like herself. Once you opened the door to the animal, there was no shutting it.”

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 13 (p. 208).

“Clavain felt little in the way of regret; more a sense of quiet relief that they were past the negotiating stage and into the infinitely more honest arena of actual battle.”

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 7 (p. 108).

““I’m just saying… we can’t trust them. We’ve never been able to trust them. That’s always been a cornerstone of our operational policy.”
“Then maybe it’s time we got a new cornerstone. They’re people, Lillian. They might be people who make us uncomfortable, people with very different values from ours, but when we’re facing local extinction at the hands of a genocidal machine intelligence, I don’t think the differences between us look massively significant, do you?””

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 35 (p. 634)

Alastair Reynolds Quotes about thinking

“Maybe it’s not as bad as she fears. Old people always think the world is going to ruin. It’s their job. Maybe they’re right, Floyd replied.”

Source: The Prefect (2007), Chapter 28 (p. 472)

“I’m fed up with everyone being lied to just because the administration thinks it’s in our best interests not to know all the facts.”

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 9 (p. 138)

“There’s a catch,” Skellsgard said.
“Another one? But of course there is. You know, I’m thinking I should start a collection.”

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 25 (p. 378)

“We don’t aspire to genetic unity, no matter what your propagandists think. The pursuit of optima leads only to local minima. We honour our errors. We actively seek persistent disequilibrium.”

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 11 (p. 171)

“But make no mistake. My counterpart is capable of a great deal of ruthlessness in pursuit of a just cause. He believes he has right on his side. And men who think they have right on their side are always the most dangerous sort.”

The Great Wall of Mars (p. 22)
Short fiction, Galactic North (2006)

“I don’t like this at all,” Hegazi said.
“Believe me,” Sylveste said, “you’re about to like it a lot less.”

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 32 (p. 600)

Alastair Reynolds: Trending quotes

““You can hardly blame them.”
“Assuming stupidity is an inherited trait, then no, I can’t.””

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 18 (p. 370).

““Haven’t you ever heard of morale-building?” Khouri had asked.
“Heard of it,” Volyova said. “Don’t happen to agree with it. Would you rather be happy and dead, or scared and alive?””

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 3 (p. 67).

““Is there anyone in Chasm City she hasn’t deceived?”
“Possibly, somewhere, but only as an extreme theoretical possibility.””

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 19 (p. 381).

Alastair Reynolds Quotes

“The battle sunk towards the horizon. Presently it would be gone, leaving a sky unsullied by human affairs.”

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 29 (p. 481).

“The virus was not helping. He had hoped that it would, but the feelings it brought were too superficial. When he most needed their succour he could feel them for the paper-thin façades they were. Just because the virus was tickling the parts of his brain that produced feelings of religious experience didn’t mean he was able to turn off the other parts of his mind that recognised these feelings as having been induced artificially. He truly felt himself to be in the presence of something sacred, but he also knew, with total clarity, that this was due to neuroanatomy. Nothing was really with him: the organ music, the stained-glass windows in the sky, the sense of proximity to something huge and timeless and infinitely compassionate were all explicable in terms of neural wiring, firing potentials, synaptic gaps.”

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 8 (p. 130)

“For someone admitting guilt she sounded remarkably void of repentance.”

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 9 (p. 136)

““Is that as bad as it sounds?” Floyd asked.
“No,” Auger said. “It’s worse. A lot worse.””

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 35 (p. 533).

“It was one of the oldest tricks of mob-management: give them a hate figure.”

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 30 (p. 466)

“He’s not really a religious man, but he knows which side his bread’s buttered on. The churches pay his salary, so he doesn’t want anyone rocking the boat with unorthodox rumours.”

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 4 (p. 66)

“It was bad, but it was some other slightly less piquant flavour of bad.”

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 28 (p. 441)

“I’m just saying that right now we could all use a degree of perspective. Because this is not the end of the world.”

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 37 (p. 573)

“Afterwards, when Clavain tried to imaging how he might describe it, he found that words were never going to be adequate for the task. And that was no surprise: evolution had shaped language to convey many concepts, but going from a single to a networked topology of self was not amongst them.”

Source: The Prefect (2007), Chapter 13 (p. 191)

““How are the internal complications, anyway? Aren’t the other branches of government getting a little suspicious about all these machinations?”
“Let’s just say that one or two discreet assassinations may still have to be performed,” Khouri said.”

The Great Wall of Mars (p. 37)
Short fiction, Galactic North (2006)

“Auger could not help marvelling at the experience of being inside the ALS sphere and seeing her world as it should have been. This was an earth that had never known nuclear war, or runaway climatic catastrophe, or smart weather, or a Nanocaust. The sight of it made her want to weep. No image had ever come close to the heartbreaking beauty of this small blue world, a beauty all the more acute now that she knew how exquisitely fragile it was. It was the beauty of a butterfly’s wing.”

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 27 (p. 490)

“The church-sponsored archaeologists were the only ones who had any kind of overview of the entire haul of relics, and they were under intense pressure to ignore any evidence that conflicted with Quaicheist scripture. That was why Rashmika wrote them so many letters, and why their infrequent replies were always so evasive. She wanted an argument; she wanted to question the entire accepted view of the scuttlers. They wanted her to go away.”

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 40 (pp. 596-597)

““Are you sharpness personified?”
Khouri poured herself a few final sips of coffee and then left the rest of it on the stove for when she got back. Coffee was her only vice, one acquired in her soldiering days on the Edge. The trick was to reach a knife-edge of alertness, but not be so buzzing that she could not point the weapon without shaking.
“I think I’ve reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level, if that’s what you mean.””

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 11 (p. 166)

““Don’t you agree with me?”
“On some distant theoretical level, just possibly.””

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 2 (p. 27).

“Don’t tell me you aren’t the slightest bit curious, Norquinco.”
“I hope you burn in hell, Sky Haussmann.”

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 12 (p. 177).

“Anxiety is a useful tool: it forces us to make plans. But when too much anxiety freezes us into indecision, it needs checking.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Chapter 35 (p. 562).
Chasm City (2001)

““You look older, son.”
“Yes, well, some of us have to get on with the business of being alive in the entropic universe.””

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 33 (p. 506)

“And even if what they showed you is true, that doesn’t begin to make it right. The cause might be just, Felka, but history’s littered with atrocities committed in the name of righteousness.”

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 16 (p. 332).

“Naqi suspected that the ability to turn drunkenness on and off like a switch must be one of the most hallowed of diplomatic skills.”

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 38 (p. 662)

Alastair Reynolds book Diamond Dogs

Turquoise Days, Chapter 2 (p. 237)
Short fiction, Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days (2003)

“Who was it who said that a wise man speaks when he has something to say, but a fool speaks because he must?”

“Nothing he said indicated that he was that angry. I mean, there’s a difference between angry and murderous. Isn’t there?
Less than you’d think.”

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 12 (p. 197).

“A single data point—even a single clutch of measurements—could not usually prove or disprove anything, but it might later turn out to play a vital role in a chain of argument, even if it was only in the biasing of some statistical distribution closer to one hypothesis than another. Science, as Naqi had long since realised, was as much a swarming, social process as it was something driven by ecstatic moments of personal discovery.
It was something she was proud to be part of.”

Source: The Prefect (2007), Chapter 5 (p. 52)

Alastair Reynolds book Diamond Dogs

Turquoise Days, Chapter 1 (p. 188)
Short fiction, Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days (2003)

“She would worry, just as you worry. It’s the people who don’t worry—those who never have any doubts that what they’re doing is good and right—they’re the ones that cause the problems.”

“I thought debate was supposed to be healthy,” she countered.
“It is,” Auger replied, “so long as you don’t disagree with me.”

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 34 (p. 628)

“This gets better, it really does. The odd thing is, I actually think you might be telling the truth. If you were going to lie, you’d at least come up with something that made sense.”

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 2 (p. 17)

““But at least you cared. At least you were ready to do something.”
“This little mess,” Auger said, “is all because of people who were ready to do something. People like me, who always know when they’re right and everyone else is wrong. Maybe what we need is a few less of us.””

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 21 (p. 367)

““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.”

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 36 (pp. 565-566)

“The poor didn’t have them and so the rich flaunted them, the larger and more conspicuous the better.”

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 18 (p. 357).

“Is he dangerous?
“Anyone who lies for a living is dangerous.”

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 25 (p. 406).

“Grafenwalder shoots a sidelong glance at Ursula Goodglass, wondering what their marriage must be like. Clearly sex isn’t in the cards, but he doubts that it was ever the main interest in their lives. Games, especially those of prestige and subterfuge, are amongst the chief entertainments of the Rust Belt moneyed.”

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 29 (p. 485).

“The future might have been crammed with miracles and wonders, but it also offered truly awesome opportunities for screwing up.”

Grafenwalder’s Bestiary (p. 212)
Short fiction, Galactic North (2006)

“Either you are a man of unusual ability, Thorn, or a man with a rather inadequate grasp of human nature. I just hope it’s the former.”

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 30 (p. 467)

“Relativity distorted classical expectations in a way that Clavain still did not find entirely intuitive. Slam two objects towards each other, each with individual velocities just below light-speed, and the classical result for their closing velocity would be the sum of their individual speeds: just under twice the speed of light. Yet the true result, confirmed with numbing precision, was that the objects saw each other approach with a combined speed that was still just below the speed of light. Similarly, the relativistic closing velocity for two objects moving towards each other with individual speeds of one-half of light-speed was not light-speed itself, but eight-tenths of it. It was the way the universe was put together, and yet it was not something the human mind had evolved to accept.”

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 27 (p. 495)

“War does strange things to truth.”

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 26 (p. 463)

““Is there anyone or anything in this city which can’t be bought?” I said, slipping him a note.
“Yeah,” the man said, laughing quietly. “But I’m not it.””

Nightingale (p. 268)
Short fiction, Galactic North (2006)

“One trusted machines. But one never expected machines to return the favor.”

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 39 (p. 634).

“I guess I’ll do what everyone else does: get on with my life and forget the big questions.”

Source: The Prefect (2007), Chapter 5 (p. 54)

“As always, it was necessary to strike a balance between a cavalier disregard for the rules and a professional understanding that some rules were more flexible than others.”

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 41 (p. 606)

“There were choices to be made, harder choices than I would have liked, and I realised that I had been neglecting them because of their very difficulty.”

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 2 (p. 19)

““Is he dead?” Irravel asked.
“Depends what you mean by dead.””

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 39 (p. 667)

Alastair Reynolds book Galactic North

Galactic North (p. 366)
Short fiction, Galactic North (2006)

“Rashmika could tell when anyone around her was lying. But seeing through her own deceptions was another matter entirely.”

“I’m hoping no one will be quite that stupid,” Sparver said. “Then again, this is baseline humans we’re dealing with.”

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 8 (p. 119)

“Am I that fascinating to you, or are you just more bored than I imagined?”

Source: The Prefect (2007), Chapter 6 (p. 59)

“Evolution doesn’t greatly care about what happens to creatures once they’ve passed on their genetic heritage.”

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 27 (p. 438).

““I’m not a bad man, Ilia. I’m just someone who knows exactly what needs to be done.”
“Like you said, always the most dangerous sort.””

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 20 (p. 332).

“You are that rarest of creatures: a man with the wisdom to see beyond his own time.”

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 33 (p. 611)

“Pretty smart piece of thinkware by all accounts: full Turing compliance; about as clever as you can make a machine before you have to start giving it human rights.”

Source: The Prefect (2007), Chapter 10 (p. 125)

“It was a glaring omission, a sign of cosmic sloppiness. Not even that, Vasko corrected himself. It was a sign of cosmic obliviousness. The universe didn’t know what was happening here. It didn’t know and it didn’t care. It didn’t even know that it didn’t know.”

Nightingale (p. 277)
Short fiction, Galactic North (2006)

“Until recently we were a trio. Before that, a quartet. Perhaps it’s just me, but I’m beginning to detect a trend.”

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 39 (p. 627)