Home > Author > Alastair Reynolds
21 " Victory loses its meaning without the memory of what you've vanquished. "
― Alastair Reynolds , Chasm City
22 " Enjoy it, kid. Enjoy feeling that you can make a difference.' Floyd flashed him a smile. 'It won't last for ever. "
― Alastair Reynolds , Century Rain
23 " Mathematics is a terrible calling. It’s as merciless as gravity. It swallows the soul. There’s a point near a black hole called the last stable orbit. Once you drop below that radius, no force in the universe can stop you falling all the way in. That’s what happened to your mother – she swam too close to theory, fell below the last stable orbit. "
― Alastair Reynolds , On the Steel Breeze (Poseidon's Children, #2)
24 " We all have it in us to be something other than what we are, I thought, but we don't often get a glimpse of what we could have been "
― Alastair Reynolds , Revenger (Revenger #1)
25 " There's such a thing as free will, Tanner. You didn't have to go along with me, unless you want to admit your brain is ruled by your dick. And I didn't get the impression you regretted any of that. "
26 " You don't usually think of boredom as something similar to pain. That's because you've only been exposed to it in relatively small doses. You don’t know its true colour. The difference between the boredom you know and the boredom I know is like the difference between touching snow and putting your hand in a vat of liquid nitrogen. "
27 " For a moment I think we were turned into information, and that in that instant we were linked to every other piece of information ever known; every thought ever thought, or at least ever captured by the light. "
― Alastair Reynolds , Revelation Space (Revelation Space, #1)
28 " You worry that we're becoming monsters. Merlin, we already were monsters. You didn't make us any worse. "
― Alastair Reynolds , Thousandth Night / Minla's Flowers
29 " Can we drop the ‘artificial intelligence’? It’s a bit like me calling you a meat-based processing system. "
30 " It’s the people who don’t worry—those who never have any doubts that what they’re doing is good and right—they’re the ones that cause the problems. "
― Alastair Reynolds , Redemption Ark (Revelation Space, #2)
31 " I don't know." That was typical Sajaki; like all the genuinely clever people Sylveste had met he knew better than to feign understanding where none existed. "
32 " It’s not the span of time that counts, but what you do with it. While you humans have been grubbing around the galaxy, looking for a sense of purpose, a meaning to pin on the chain of cosmic accidents that brought you shambling into existence, we have been doing great things. In the span of time that it takes you to sneeze, I can run the equivalent of a year’s worth of human consciousness. Imagine all the thinking we have done since our emergence. "
― Alastair Reynolds
33 " It was created to endure for a specific moment in time. Like a sandcastle, or an ice sculpture. Here, and then gone. In a way, that's the beauty of it. Who'd marvel at a sandcastle, if sandcastles lasted forever? "
― Alastair Reynolds , Thousandth Night
34 " ... shown beneath the map of the galaxy - was an outrageous confection of a planet: a striped marshmallow giant with a necklace of sugary rings, combed and braided by the resonant forces of a dozen glazed and candied moons. "
― Alastair Reynolds , House of Suns
35 " I think the deeper we go, the less likelihood we'll have of being recognised as something unwanted. It's like the human body - the greatest density of pain receptors lies in the skin. "
36 " Only an evolutionary eyeblink separated Kanu from the savannah, and that was just as true for the Risen. Their minds might be fixed on the stars, but their bodies were only a footstep from the dust and heat of Amboseli. "
― Alastair Reynolds , Poseidon's Wake (Poseidon's Children, #3)
37 " It was good to be loved, good to love another human being – even in the belly of a starship arrowing for unmapped space. "
38 " We should have brought a torch,” he was saying. “We have been to Saturn and back and we didn’t bring a torch. "
39 " Everything depends on everything else, doesn’t it? That’s interconnectivity for you – it’s a bitch. "
40 " Quantum reality is a nest of snakes, Clavain, and we are already poking it with a very sharp stick. "