“Across the globe, in dark places of the earth, secret lairs were rarely caves of monsters or marvels but markets. Shops. The worst-kept secret in circulation was that certain activities invested items in their proximity with certain affects, effects, and powers, and made them hugely valuable. And that thus it was imperative that they be sold. That, certainly, had been the case for as long as there had been people and things, but there were always fluctuations. The occult economies of charged items were always jostling.”

— China Miéville, book The 9th Technique

The 9th Technique (p. 101)
Short Fiction, Three Moments of an Explosion (2015)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Across the globe, in dark places of the earth, secret lairs were rarely caves of monsters or marvels but markets. Shops…" by China Miéville?

China Miéville102

English writer 1972

Related quotes

“I had three secrets and sold them all.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Jim Dandy : Fat Man in a Famine (1947)

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Variant: I love you as one loves certain dark things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
Source: 100 Love Sonnets

“They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Part 2, Apert
Source: Anathem (2008)

“He'd kept this silence because his own secrets were darker, more hidden, and because he believed that his secrets had created hers.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

“They rode on. They rode like men invested with a purpose whose origins were antecedent to them, like blood legatees of an order both imperative and remote. For although each man among them was discrete unto himself, conjoined they made a thing that had not been before and in that communal soul were wastes hardly reckonable more than those whited regions on old maps where monsters do live and where there is nothing other of the known world save conjectural winds.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter XII

“Her mother had once told her that there were men who kept secrets bottled up inside and that it spelled trouble for the women who loved them.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Denise Holton, Chapter 21, p. 231
2000s, The Rescue (2000)

“The work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be, it was how you got a productive economy.
But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power, but of story. If their employees came home with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing.
The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them. People who couldn't live without story…had to look somewhere outside of work for a feeling that they were part of a story, which I guessed was why Sæculars were so concerned with sports, and with religion. How else could you see yourself as part of an adventure?”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Erasmas theorizing why others are joining his journey, Part 7, "Feral"
Anathem (2008)

“It is a long-cherished tradition among a certain type of military thinker that huge casualties are the main thing. If they are on the other side then this is a valuable bonus.”

Terry Pratchett book Jingo

Source: Jingo

“His friends, who had been waiting for the death announcement, came to congratulate him. They were eager to hear the complete details of the Trial by Ordeal; but Barrent had learned now that secret knowledge was the road to power. He gave them only the sketchiest outline.”

Robert Sheckley book The Status Civilization

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 11 (p. 52)

“There was a time when people accepted magical experiences as natural. There were no priests then, and no one went chasing after the secrets of the occult.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

China Miéville102

Related quotes

Related topics