Quotes from book
Desolation Road

Desolation Road
Ian McDonald

Desolation Road is a 1988 science fiction novel written by Ian McDonald. It was McDonald's first published novel. The plot takes place on a far future Mars in a town that develops around an oasis in the terraformed Martian desert. McDonald published a sequel, Ares Express, in 2001.

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“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).

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“A chilly piety leaked into the air.”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

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

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“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).

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““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).

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“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).

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“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).

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“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 photo

“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).

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“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).

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“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).

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“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).

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