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““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.”

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

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

“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.”

Alastair Reynolds

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

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

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

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

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

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

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

“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.”

Alastair Reynolds

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

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

Alastair Reynolds book Century Rain

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

“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.”

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

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

“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.”

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

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

“War does strange things to truth.”

Alastair Reynolds

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

““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.””

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

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

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

Alastair Reynolds book The Prefect

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

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

Alastair Reynolds book Century Rain

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

“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.”

Alastair Reynolds book Century Rain

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

“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.”

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

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

“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.”

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

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

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

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.”

Alastair Reynolds book Absolution Gap

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

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

Alastair Reynolds book The Prefect

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

““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.””

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

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

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

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

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