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Schismatrix Plus QUOTES

Schismatrix Plus QUOTES

1 " Death defeats us in the end. But our children are our revenge against it. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

2 " History's kaleidoscope worked its permutations, its pace ever faster, approaching some unknown crescendo. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

3 " Do you remember, Abelard... Once I told you that ecstasy was better than being God."
"I remember."
"I was wrong, darling. Being God is better. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

4 " Life, and intelligence, do not mix very well. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

5 " Stern social measures had to be adopted to keep entire populations from disintegrating in an orgy of plenty. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

6 " Your audience are whores, oxygen farmers, two dozen pirate bands, and fifty runaway mathematicians. They would all love to see dancing and fighting. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

7 " Science tore the human race to bits. When anarchy hit, people struggled for community. The politicians chose enemies so that they could bind their followers with hate and terror. Community isn’t enough when a thousand new ways of life beckon from every circuit and test tube. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

8 " Reality’s a horde of mice, nibbling away in the basement of your dreams.… "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

9 " Mankind had always been surrounded by the miraculous. Nothing much had ever come of it. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

10 " Mankind’s a dead issue now, cousin. There are no more souls. Only states of mind. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

11 " Let's throw his ass out the airlock," suggested the Speaker of the House.
"We can't do that," said the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He was a feeble old Mechanist who was subject to nosebleeds. "He is still Secretary of State and can't be sentenced without impeachment by the Senate."
The three Senators, two men and a woman, looked interested. The Senate didn't see much action in the government of the tiny Democracy. They were the least trusted members of the crew and were outnumbered by the House. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

12 " Stripping's bad form, these days," he said. "It's lost all meaning. People do it just to punctuate a conversation. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

13 " He was a thing of flesh and blood, of life and death, not an Immanent Will. A tree drew strength from light, but it was not light itself. And life was a process of changing, but it was not change itself. That was what death was for. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

14 " Anywhere there is variety there is the risk of change. Change that can’t be tolerated. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

15 " For a moment, sincere human fury had burned through the training, touched a hot core of genuine rage. He felt shaken, but more whole, more truly himself, then he'd been for years. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

16 " SCHISMATRIX is a creeping sea-urchin of a book—spikey and odd. It isn’t very elegant, and it lacks bilateral symmetry, but pieces of it break off inside people and stick with them for years. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

17 " They took my womb out, and they put in brain tissue. Grafts from the pleasure center, darling. I’m wired to the ass and the spine and the throat, and it’s better than being God. When I’m hot, I sweat perfume. I’m cleaner than a fresh needle, and nothing leaves my body that you can’t drink like wine or eat like candy. And they left me bright, so that I would know what submission was. Do you know what submission is, darling? "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

18 " We don’t think the way they want us to,” the girl said. “And they’ll kill us for it. But not until we’ve pried the worldskull open and put our needles in. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

19 " The cliques formed a shadow government in C-K, a moral parallel to the distracted formal rule of the Queen's Advisors. Clique elites moved behind the scenes, imitating their paragon Wellspring in deliberate webs of self-spun obfuscation. The forms of power and its realities had been gently disentangled. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus

20 " I can’t ask you to change,” her husband said. “People only change if you give them time. "

― Bruce Sterling , Schismatrix Plus