Alastair Reynolds: Trending quotes

“Maybe if you weren’t busy throwing rocks at each other, you could spend a little time on the other niceties of life, such as cooperation and mutual advancement.”

Alastair Reynolds

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

Business , Life , Time

“Welcome to politics, Doctor. We don’t get to pick our allies. The best we can hope for is that we don’t despise them quite as much as our enemies.”

Alastair Reynolds book Terminal World

Source: Terminal World (2010), Chapter 22 (p. 417)

Hope

“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.”

Alastair Reynolds

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

Love , Way , Weather

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

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

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

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

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

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

Stupidity

““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.””

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

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

Truth , History , Business

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

Alastair Reynolds

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

Time

“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.”

Alastair Reynolds book Century Rain

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

““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?””

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

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

Dead , Happiness

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

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

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

“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.”

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

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

Law , Mountain , Star , Universe

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

Alastair Reynolds book Absolution Gap

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

People , Way

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

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

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

“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.”

Alastair Reynolds book Absolution Gap

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

Hope , Music , Feeling , Sense

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

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

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

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

Alastair Reynolds book Century Rain

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

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

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

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

Hate

“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.”

Alastair Reynolds book Absolution Gap

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

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

Alastair Reynolds book Century Rain

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

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

Alastair Reynolds book The Prefect

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

World