Quotes from book
House of Suns

House of Suns

Alastair Reynolds

An “engaging and awe-inspiring”(SF Signal) space opera from the critically-acclaimed author of the Revelation Space series. Six million years ago, at the dawn of the star-faring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones, which she called shatterlings. She sent them out into the galaxy to observe and document the rise and fall of countless human empires. Since then, every two hundred thousand years, they gather to exchange news and memories of their travels. Only there is no Gathering. Someone is eliminating the Gentian line. And now Campion and Purslane—two shatterlings who have fallen in love and shared forbidden experiences—must determine exactly who, or what, their enemy is, before they are wiped out of existence...

“I have only your word for that.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

“Yes,” the glass man said, “that’s rather the point. There’s going to have to be a lot more trust from this time forward. Why don’t we start as we mean to go on?”

Chapter 41 (p. 563)
House of Suns (2008)

“Do you see us slavering for revenge, that most pointlessly biological of imperatives?”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 41 (p. 558)

“We were sowing so much misinformation that some of it came back and bit us.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 39 (pp. 516-517)

“Don’t you start. It’s bad enough that one of us feels he could have done more. We’re human, Campion—that’s all it boils down to. Human and not nearly as clever as we thought we were when it counted. End of story. When they put up the gravestone for our species, that’ll be the epitaph.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 39 (p. 509)

“Given the evidence at our disposal, only a fool would put any faith in the organic and the machine living harmoniously for the rest of time.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 38 (pp. 501-502)

“They’re your children. The more you try to force them to be like you, the more they’re going to flare off in different directions like wild fireworks, the more they’re going to surprise and disappoint you.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Introduction to Part 8 (pp. 485-486)
House of Suns (2008)

“There had been a human soul in that skull only a few hours earlier, and now no authority in the universe could bring her back. We were like monkeys sitting around a fire that had just extinguished, wondering why the warmth and light had gone away.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 19 (pp. 307-308)

“I felt a terrible sadness open inside me, a void through which the winds from the end of the universe were blowing.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 19 (p. 307)

“Civilisations beyond number had risen from obscurity, considering themselves masters of all creation, before fading back into the footnotes of history.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 12 (p. 152)

“The problem was, although I was as certain as I could be that I was right, I could offer nothing to bolster my arguments.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Introduction to Part 2 (p. 100)
House of Suns (2008)

“No act of knowledge acquisition is entirely without risk.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 5 (p. 59)

“I was born in a house with a million rooms, built on a small, airless world on the edge of an empire of light and commerce that the adults called the Golden Hour, for a reason I did not yet grasp.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 1 (p. 3; opening words)

“If my years as a shatterling had taught me anything, it was that not all questions had answers. Societies had reduced themselves to radioactive dust because they could not accept that single unpalatable truth.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 8 (pp. 84-85)

“Open your story-cube on the way home and ask it to tell you about causality violation. I did once, because I asked the same question you did. Why should I be limited? What right does the universe have to say what I can and can’t do? I’m intelligent. The universe is just a lot of hydrogen and dirt, going through the motions. But in this instance the universe has the final say.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Introduction to Part 4 (p. 267)
House of Suns (2008)

“People lived and died and did strange, pointless things to themselves. So did societies, be they city-sized states or galactic empires encompassing thousands of solar systems. Everything came and went, everything was new and bright with promise once and old and worn out later, and everything left a small, diminishing stain on eternity, a mark that time would eventually erase.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 16 (p. 240)

“I had read in the story-cube that the speed of light was a universal limit; that in a thousand years of experimentation—despite any number of false dawns—no one had ever managed to circumvent it. This had made me feel hemmed in and claustrophobic—it was like being told I must never run or skip down the long, dreary corridors of the house, but must walk instead, with my neck straight and my hands held behind my back. I felt affronted, as if the speed of light was a personal assault on my liberty. Why should I not go as fast as I pleased? Why should I not skip and run? But I could no more explain why the speed limit existed than I could explain why two and two did not make five. It was simply the way things were, one of those rules—like the edict not to visit certain parts of the house—that were not to be questioned.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Introduction to Part 2 (p. 100)
House of Suns (2008)

Similar authors

Alastair Reynolds photo

Alastair Reynolds198

British novelist and astronomer 1966

Joanne K. Rowling photo

Joanne K. Rowling29

British novelist, author of the Harry Potter series None

Chuck Palahniuk photo

Chuck Palahniuk555

American novelist, essayist None

Nicholas Sparks photo

Nicholas Sparks646

American writer and novelist None

Jimmy Carr photo

Jimmy Carr20

British comedian and humourist None

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo

Sherrilyn Kenyon752

Novelist None

Laurell K. Hamilton photo

Laurell K. Hamilton261

Novelist None

Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo

Carlos Ruiz Zafón149

Spanish writer None

Brian Molko photo

Brian Molko2

musician None

John Green photo

John Green103

American author and vlogger None

Similar authors

Alastair Reynolds photo

Alastair Reynolds198

British novelist and astronomer 1966

Joanne K. Rowling photo

Joanne K. Rowling29

British novelist, author of the Harry Potter series None

Chuck Palahniuk photo

Chuck Palahniuk555

American novelist, essayist None

Nicholas Sparks photo

Nicholas Sparks646

American writer and novelist None

Jimmy Carr photo

Jimmy Carr20

British comedian and humourist None