Home > Work > Broken Angels (Takeshi Kovacs, #2)
21 " The difference between virtuality and life is very simple. In a construct you know everything is being run by an all-powerful machine. Reality doesn’t offer this assurance, so it’s very easy to develop the mistaken impression that you’re in control. Quellcrist Falconer Ethics on the Precipice "
― Richard K. Morgan , Broken Angels (Takeshi Kovacs, #2)
22 " In any agenda, political or otherwise, there is a cost to be borne. Always ask what it is, and who will be paying. If you don’t, then the agenda-makers will pick up the perfume of your silence like swamp panthers on the scent of blood, and the next thing you know, the person expected to bear the cost will be you. And you may not have what it takes to pay. Quellcrist Falconer Things I Should Have Learnt By Now Vol II "
23 " You don’t trust me?’ ‘Now you come to mention it, no. But that isn’t it. "
24 " I’ve talked to the lawyers.’ ‘Did you disinfect afterwards? "
25 " You’re wrong, Hand,” I said quietly. “I’d love to have access to all this shit you believe. I’d love to be able to summon someone who’s responsible for this fuckup of a creation. Because then I’d be able to kill them. Slowly.” • "
26 " Too much virtuality will do that to you sometimes. There’s this vague feeling of abrasion in the head when you disconnect, a disquieting sense that reality isn’t quite sharp enough anymore, a waxing and waning fuzziness that might be what the edge of madness feels like. The "
27 " about the blood; it isn’t yours. You put this flesh on a couple of days ago, and you’ll be taking it off again soon if you can manage not to get killed first. Don’t worry about wounds; check your functionality. "
28 " War is like any other bad relationship. Of course you want out, but at what price? And perhaps more importantly, once you get out, will you be any better off? QUELLCRIST FALCONER Campaign Diaries "
29 " Knowledge tossed away,” she said, shivering a little in the desert chill. “Willful ignorance in the face of something we might have to work to understand.” At "
30 " You can’t talk to people like that. Soldiers, corporate execs, politicians. All you can do is kill them, and even that rarely makes things any better. They just leave their shit behind, and someone else to carry on. "
31 " Too much virtuality will do that to you sometimes. There’s this vague feeling of abrasion in the head when you disconnect, a disquieting sense that reality isn’t quite sharp enough anymore, a waxing and waning fuzziness that might be what the edge of madness feels like. "
32 " Dig down into the blood depths of hormonal bedrock, where violence and sex and power grow fibrously entwined. It’s a murky, complicated place down there. No telling what you’ll drag up once you start excavating. "
33 " Wardani had donned the emotional equivalent of a vacuum suit, the only response left in the human armoury when the moral parameters of the outside environment have grown so outrageously variable that an exposed mind can no longer survive unshielded. "
34 " who knows how the data behind these metaphors has traveled, from where and for how long. "
35 " I already have a doctorate in conflict investment. I don’t really need the gifted-amateur reading list. "
36 " Wardani had donned the emotional equivalent of a vacuum suit, the only response left in the human armory when the moral parameters of the outside environment have grown so outrageously variable that an exposed mind can no longer survive unshielded. "
37 " Planetary colonization is invariably a destructive process, and advanced technology hasn’t done much more than sanitize that process so that humans are guaranteed their customary position on top of whatever ecosystem they are raping. "
38 " Half the things we dig up, we have no idea what they are, and we still sell them as fucking coffee-table trinkets. Right now, someone back on Latimer has probably got the encoded secret of a faster-than-light drive mounted on their fucking living room wall.” She paused. “And it’s probably upside down. "
39 " The difference between virtuality and life is very simple. In a construct you know everything is being run by an all-powerful machine. Reality doesn’t offer this assurance, so it’s very easy to develop the mistaken impression that you’re in control. "
40 " She said, I have no excuses, least of all for God. Like all tyrants, he is not worthy of the spit you would waste on negotiations. The deal we have is infinitely simpler—I don’t call him to account, and he extends me the same courtesy. "