“It has everything in it, if you look hard enough,” Dorthy said, taking the sheaf. “Love, jealousy, avarice, loyalty, murder, madness...I find it reassuring that human nature is so constant.”
Chapter 3 “The Keep” (p. 171; ellipses in the original)
Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)
Paul J. McAuley:
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Paul J. McAuley: Citations en anglais
Source: Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988), Chapter 2 “The Hold” (pp. 131-132)
Source: Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988), Chapter 1 “Camp Zero” (p. 38)
“They survive. Ah yes, survive. And achieve nothing to deserve it.”
“The only meaning of life, if it can be said to have meaning, is to survive. My brothers and sisters, herding their children on the plains, find meaning in the simple pattern of their lives and need nothing more. They are immersed in the processes of the world: all is one. That is their religion. They seek no other meaning.
“Your race, now, believes that expansion is all. You think to outrace your dark destiny, believe that the whole universe is yours when you understand so little of it.”
Chapter 4 “At the Core” (p. 271)
Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)
“Stay the same and after a while you come to think that nothing will ever change.”
Source: Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988), Chapter 4 “At the Core” (p. 269)
“I didn’t know that you were into politics.”
“Anyone with money has to be. Real money, I mean. Even criminals need to keep a politician in their pockets these days.”
Chapter 3 “The Keep” (p. 223)
Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)
“It was both true, and not the complete truth, like so much of his talk.”
Source: Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988), Chapter 3 “The Keep” (p. 197)
“And now you have had to alter your theory.”
”Well,” Andrews said, smiling, “that’s science.”
Chapter 3 “The Keep” (p. 182)
Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)
“We must remember that they are alien.”
“That’s hardly a basis for speculation now. It explains everything and nothing.”
Chapter 2 “The Hold” (p. 70)
Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)
Source: Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988), Chapter 1 “Camp Zero” (p. 38)
“You can’t hate change. It’s like hating life.”
In Jonathan Strahan (ed.) Drowned Worlds (e-book edition, ISBN 978-1-84997-930-6)
Short fiction, Elves of Antarctica (2016)
