Michael Swanwick: Trending quotes

“Incolore sighed. “The loyalty of the systematically betrayed. Is there anything sadder?””

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 10, “The Sermon” (pp. 165-166)

“Information is information, Faust. Knowledge is knowledge. I make no distinction between the high and the low.”

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 21 (p. 378)

“Oh, Sirin, how could you? You know as well as I do how dangerous scrying the future can be. Half the time what it shows you wouldn’t happen if you hadn’t foreseen it.”

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 6, “Practical Designs” (p. 80)

“Still, it was no easy thing to flirt in German.”

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 16 (p. 277)

““Well, birth control’s easy. The first thing you have to know is that it doesn’t work.”
“What?”
“Not consistently. No matter how careful you are, every time you play hide-the-salami with the boys, you’re running the risk of ending up with a belly full of consequences.”
“But—”
“Contraceptive spells are never entirely reliable. That’s because their power comes from the Mother, and the Mother wants children. Each cantrip has its loophole, every fetish its flaw. Ultimately, contraception is just a way of luring you into playing her game.”
“You mean that sooner or later it’s going to fail me?”
“That’s not what I said. It works well enough for enough of us that the rest will take their chances. But the odds are never going to be as good as you’d like them to be. There are no guarantees.””

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 13, “Tabloids” (p. 225)

““How… how can”—savagely, he slashed an arm down before him in absolute negation of all he saw—“such be? How could God allow it?”
“God? You fool—there is no God!”
The words struck Faust like a great bronze clapper, shattering the crusted certainties of a lifetime, reverberating, setting up echoes that washed back and forth through his being in slowly lessening waves, leaving no atom unshaken, no belief untouched. There was no God. He knew this for the truth, recognized it as such on an almost physical level, for it summed up everything he had ever thought or reasoned. It resolved a thousand doubts. It left no question unanswered. There was no God! Everything was possible now. Nothing was forbidden.”

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 10 (pp. 168-169)

“Your girlfriend is none too tightly wrapped, if you’ll forgive me for saying so. I don’t think she’s actually crazy, but—I been watching her a long time, and it is my considered opinion that she is none too clear on where the line between fantasy and reality should be drawn.”

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 2, “Revelations” (pp. 30-31)

Michael Swanwick

Source: In the Drift (1985), Chapter 5, “Marrow Death” (pp. 180-181)

““Are you ready?” Jane asked.
“Before I existed, I was ready.””

“Tyranny always has its rationale.”

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 22 (p. 394)

“What you propose to do today is to bring civilization to a lawless corner of the world. I know that you claim more modest ambitions. But when the protection of law is extended to the innocent and weak, that is civilization. Now I hold that in the natural state, there are only two kinds of people in the world—the men with guns, and the victims. And the one kind feeds off the other.”

Source: Stations of the Tide (1991), Chapter 2, “Witch Cults of Whitemarsh” (p. 26)

Michael Swanwick

Source: In the Drift (1985), Chapter 4, “Mutagen Fair” (p. 130)

“So it was that the Catherines poured water and spooned gruel, while the Clares prayed for the intercession of the saints. The Catherines changed sheets. The Clares practiced mortification of the flesh. The Catherines employed antibiotics. The Clares made a public display of a kneecap of their patron saint.
It was soon widely know to which hospital one went to get well, and to which one went to die.”

““I am playing a game called Futility,” she said. Are you familiar with it?
“How does one win?”
“You don’t. You can only postpone losing. I’ve managed to keep this particular game going for years.””

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 9, “The Plague Kitchen” (p. 141)

“Our records must be scrupulous, whether they show what we want them to show or not.”

Source: Stations of the Tide (1991), Chapter 3, “The Dance of the Inheritors” (p. 46)

“The announcers sounded giddily excited. Their faces flushed, their eyes bright. Natural disasters did that to people, made them feel significant, reassured them that their actions mattered.”

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 9, “The Plague Kitchen” (p. 148)

“He had for many years thought of Christ as a rival in greatness. Now he realized they were both brothers in misery. Their enemies were identical: the howling mob, the fearful, the inferior, the baying hounds of conventional morality.”

Source: Stations of the Tide (1991), Chapter 12, “Across the Ancient Causeway” (p. 223)

“Meanwhile, the Wheel turns. The humble are exalted and the mighty are humbled. The best are inevitably defeated, and the scum always rises to the top. Here is the source of all the world’s pain, that restless turning, ever accelerating, always bringing us around again to where we were before, but older, changed, scarred, and sorrowful. Had I only known the identity of the whisperer, I would never have listened. The Wheel would not have been set in motion.”

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 19, “Ashes” (p. 320)

“This was human glory—a sad and exhaust-darkened memorial for good citizens to ignore and drunks to piss upon on their way home from the brothels. Here was the omega-point of all ambition.”

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 13 (p. 232)

“Be grateful. I’ve taught you a valuable lesson. Most people never do learn exactly how much they will do to stay alive.”

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 19, “Ashes” (p. 317)

“I want your help to destroy the universe.”

Source: Stations of the Tide (1991), Chapter 13, “A View from a Height” (p. 232)