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Ian McDonald Quotes

For several other people called Ian McDonald or a similar spelling, see Ian McDonald.Ian McDonald is a British science fiction novelist, living in Belfast. His themes include nanotechnology, postcyberpunk settings, and the impact of rapid social and technological change on non-Western societies. Wikipedia  

✵ 31. March 1960
Ian McDonald photo

Works

Desolation Road
Desolation Road
Ian McDonald
The Dervish House
The Dervish House
Ian McDonald
River of Gods
River of Gods
Ian McDonald
The Tear
Ian McDonald
Ian McDonald: 30   quotes 1   like

Famous Ian McDonald Quotes

“She knew what she was now. She had a purpose. Freedom was still hers, but it was a purposeful freedom. She would seek responsibility, for freedom without responsibility was worthless, and to that duality she would add power, for responsibility without power was impotence. She would go to Wisdom and enthrone the trinity of liberties within herself.”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 31 (p. 162).

“How proud he would have felt […] to have seen those seeds germinate into a Muslim nation, a Land of the Pure. How it would have broken his heart to see that Land of the Pure become a medieval theocracy and then rip itself apart in tribal factionalism. The Word of God prophecies from the barrel of an AK47.”

Ian McDonald book River of Gods

Source: River of Gods (2006), Ch. 37 (p. 411).

“Economics is the most human of sciences. It is the science of wants and frustrations. It is psychology subject to the abstract, amplifying forces of mathematics.”

Ian McDonald book The Dervish House

Source: The Dervish House (2010), Ch. 2, §8 (p. 72)

“A chilly piety leaked into the air.”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 49 (p. 248).

“He has no belief—faith is beneath his dignity—but he enjoys the designed madness of religion.”

Ian McDonald book The Dervish House

Source: The Dervish House (2010), Ch. 1, §5 (p. 21)

“These songs were the true names of things, spoken by the soul, so easily buried under the little busynesses of everyman everyday.”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 22 (p. 111).

Ian McDonald Quotes about life

“She had not won a clean victory. Tinkering with time and history offended her political sensibilities. History was written in the stones. It was not a numinous thing to be tossed sparkling in the air to lie where it fell. She did not like to think of her life and world as a mere mutability of potentials.”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 64 (p. 327).

“He had sworn on his father's honour, his mother's life, his brother's masculinity, his sister's purity and his prophet's beard that he would never set foot there again. God, knowing people, thinks little of honour or purity or even life, but vows made on his prophet he loves to confound.”

Ian McDonald book The Dervish House

Source: The Dervish House (2010), Ch. 5, §6 (p. 178)

“The laws of economics are subject to the laws of physics. The physical processes that govern this planet and the continued life upon it place as stringent an upper limit on economic growth as the speed of light does on our knowledge of the universe.”

Ian McDonald book River of Gods

Source: River of Gods (2006), Ch. 9 (p. 93).

Ian McDonald Quotes

“It was not socialism or communism or Islamism. It was romanticism. There is no more incandescent passion than love in a time of revolution.”

Ian McDonald book The Dervish House

Source: The Dervish House (2010), Ch. 6, §8 (p. 223)

Love , Communication , Passion , Time

“"This is now a matter of national security, sir."
"This is Franz Kafka, is what it is."
Tom Hanks looks at chair-rocker, who writes the name down.
"He's a Czech writer," Thomas Lull says. "He's been dead a hundred years. I was attempting irony."
"Sir, please do not attempt irony. This is a most serious issue."”

Ian McDonald book River of Gods

Source: River of Gods (2006), Ch. 42 (p. 444).

Dead

“Ayşe Erkoç learned long ago that the secret of doing anything illicit in Istanbul is to do it in full public gaze in the clear light of day. No one ever questions the legitimacy of the blatant.”

Ian McDonald book The Dervish House

Source: The Dervish House (2010), Ch. 7, §7 (p. 251).

Secret , Question , Light , Learning

““Hey!” the people cried in their dreams. “Give us back our ghosts!” for ghosts are as much a part of a community as its plumbing or its library, for how can a community be without its memories?”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 18 (p. 94).

People , Dreams , Communication , Memory

“"The words still don't move."
"The words don't need to move. It is you who is moved by them."”

Ian McDonald book River of Gods

Source: River of Gods (2006), Ch. 19 (p. 239).

“Ghosts? Pah. We are the most substantial things in the world, the foundations of the present. We are memories.”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 54 (p. 270).

World , Memory

“The closer they come to the object of desire the more reluctant they are to grasp it. The search is the thing. The process is the purpose. The final mystery can only be anticlimactic. The story is ended.”

Ian McDonald book The Dervish House

Source: The Dervish House (2010), Ch. 6, §2 (p. 207)

Search

“Profit, Empire, Industry. What was a dead lake, a few poisoned rivers, a few slagged hillsides? Priorities, that was what it was about. Priorities and Progress.”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 56 (p. 276).

Dead

“At some point it will inevitably crash again: as weapons of mass destruction go, unrestricted market economies are among the more subtle but sure.”

Ian McDonald book The Dervish House

Source: The Dervish House (2010), Ch. 4, §7 (p. 140)

“Half your DNA's owned by some biotech corporation. Every time you have sex, you break copyright.”

Ian McDonald book River of Gods

Source: River of Gods (2006), Ch. 5 (p. 58).

Sex , Time

“His theory of golf is, never play any sport that requires you to dress as your grandfather.”

Ian McDonald book River of Gods

Source: River of Gods (2006), Ch. 20 (p. 249).

Sport

“I've always found that the root of a computer problem is human frailty”

Ian McDonald book River of Gods

Source: River of Gods (2006), Ch. 2 (p. 27).

Problem

“Legends should stay legends; otherwise they just become history, when the natural course of things is the other way around, from history to legend.”

Ian McDonald book The Dervish House

Source: The Dervish House (2010), Ch. 3, §5 (p. 109)

Way , History , Nature

“The elephants fight but the rats go about their business.”

Ian McDonald book River of Gods

Source: River of Gods (2006), Ch. 44 (p. 458).

Business , Fight

“The five minutes ticked away on Limaal Mandella’s fob watch and the tension wound tight around Corporation Plaza. Rael Mandella Jr., sweating in his father’s best championship suit, was horrified to realize how few of such brief five-minute periods went to make up a lifetime.”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 47 (p. 238).

“It was fate, and being angry at fate was as futile as being angry at the weather.”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 23 (p. 116).

Fate , Weather

“She had trapped the bird of salvation, sung to it, tamed it and wrung its neck.”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 32 (p. 168).

Bird

“Nationalism, then Islamism, both twentieth-century inventions, destroyed the Greek civilization in Egypt that had endured for three thousand years.”

Ian McDonald book The Dervish House

Source: The Dervish House (2010), Ch. 5, §1 (p. 158)

“Once muddying subjectivities are removed from the issue, the decision becomes clear.”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 49 (p. 247).

Decision

“Any aeai [A. I., artificial intelligence ] smart enough to pass a Turing test is smart enough to know to fail it.”

Ian McDonald book River of Gods

Source: River of Gods (2006), Ch. 4 (p. 42).

Intelligence

“Only miscalculation could kill you in interstellar war. The equations were hard but they were fair.”

Ian McDonald book The Tear

In Galactic Empires, edited by Gardner Dozois, reprinted in Rich Horton (ed.), The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2009 (p. 506)
Short fiction, The Tear (2008)

War

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