Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1) QUOTES

2 " Like Bancroft, MacIntyre had been a man of power, and like all men of power, when he talked of prices worth paying, you could be sure of one thing. Someone else was paying. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)

4 " There's a sameness to streetlife. On every world I've ever been, the same underlying patterns play out, flaunt and vaunt, buy and sell, like some distilled essence of human behavior seeping out from whatever clanking political machine has been dropped on it from above. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)

6 " The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference - the only difference in their eyes - between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)

8 " If they asked how I died tell them: Still angry. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)

10 " A weapon is a tool," she repeated, a little breathlessly. "A tool for killing and destroying. And there will be times when, as an Envoy, you must kill and destroy. Then you will choose and equip yourself with the tools that you need. But remember the weakness of weapons. They are an extension--you are the killer and destroyer. You are whole, with or without them. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)

12 " For all that we have done, as a civilization, as individuals, the universe is not stable, and nor is any single thing within it. Stars consume themselves, the universe itself rushes apart, and we ourselves are composed of matter in constant flux. Colonies of cells in temporary alliance, replicating and decaying and housed within, an incandescent cloud of electrical impulse and precariously stacked carbon code memory. This is reality, this is self knowledge, and the perception of it will, of course, make you dizzy. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)

14 " Reality is so flexible these days, it’s hard to tell who’s disconnected from it and who isn’t. You might even say it’s a pointless distinction. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)

16 " I lay still for a while, picking up the scattered garments of my mind and trying to assemble some kind of reasonable outfit from them. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)

18 " Catholics get on well with tyranny. It's in the culture. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)

20 " It was the single forgiving phrase in the syntax of weaponry I had strapped about me. The rest were unequivocal sentences of death. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)