Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3) QUOTES

1 " We all get our dreams stamped on from time to time, right? And if it didn’t hurt, what kind of second-rate dreams would they be? "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

2 " Every previous revolutionary movement in human history has made the same basic mistake. They’ve all seen power as a static apparatus, as a structure. And it’s not. It’s a dynamic, a flow system with two possible tendencies. Power either accumulates, or it diffuses through the system. In most societies, it’s in accumulative mode, and most revolutionary movements are only really interested in reconstituting the accumulation in a new location. A genuine revolution has to reverse the flow. And no one ever does that, because they’re all too fucking scared of losing their conning tower moment in the historical process. If you tear down one agglutinative power dynamic and put another one in its place, you’ve changed nothing. You’re not going to solve any of that society’s problems, they’ll just reemerge at a new angle. You’ve got to set up the nanotech that will deal with the problems on its own. You’ve got to build the structures that allow for diffusion of power, not re-grouping. Accountability, demodynamic access, systems of constituted rights, education in the use of political infrastructure "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

3 " Kovacs to a female believer in New Revelation: "..I’m calling you a gutless betrayer of your sex. I can see your husband’s angle, he’s a man, he’s got everything to gain from this crapshit. But you? You’ve thrown away centuries of political struggle and scientific advance so you can sit in the dark and mutter your superstitions of unworth to yourself. You’ll let your life, the most precious thing you have, be stolen from you hour by hour and day by day as long as you can eke out the existence your males will let you have. And then, when you finally die, and I hope it’s soon, sister, I really do, then at the last you’ll spite your own potential and shirk the final power we’ve won for ourselves to come back and try again. You’ll do all of this because of your fucking faith, and if that child in your belly is female, then you’ll condemn her to the same fucking thing "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

4 " it’s amazing how constant repetition can make even the most obvious truths irritating enough to disagree with. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

5 " The priest I didn’t talk to at all, because I didn’t want to have to hide his body afterward. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

6 " This enemy you cannot kill,” I murmured. He nodded and finished the quote for me. “You can only drive it back damaged into the depths and teach your children to watch the waves for its return. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

7 " Every previous revolutionary movement in human history has made the same basic mistake. They’ve all seen power as a static apparatus, as a structure. And it’s not. It’s a dynamic, a flow system with two possible tendencies. Power either accumulates, or it diffuses through the system. In most societies, it’s in accumulative mode, and most revolutionary movements are only really interested in reconstituting the accumulation in a new location. A genuine revolution has to reverse the flow. And no one ever does that, because they’re all too fucking scared of losing their conning tower moment in the historical process. If "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

8 " Part of running a successful tyranny is knowing when and how to let your subjects off the leash "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

9 " No, I’m calling you a gutless betrayer of your sex. I can see your husband’s angle, he’s a man, he’s got everything to gain from this crabshit. But you? You’ve thrown away centuries of political struggle and scientific advance so you can sit in the dark and mutter your superstitions of unworth to yourself. You’ll let your life, the most precious thing you have, be stolen from you hour by hour and day by day as long as you can eke out the existence your males will let you have. And then, when you finally die, and I hope it’s soon, sister, I really do, then at the last you’ll spite your own potential and shirk the final power we’ve won for ourselves to come back and try again. You’ll do all of this because of your fucking faith, and if that child in your belly is female, then you’ll condemn her to the same fucking thing. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

10 " Or maybe that was just the swiftly gathering sense of motion that had me now, the drug-like grip of a decision taken and what it meant. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

11 " Like the Sharyan resistance in general, they weren’t overly imaginative—which in the end proved their downfall when faced with the Envoys—but they weren’t any kind of pushover, either. We’d all developed a healthy respect for their courage and combat endurance by the time we slaughtered the last of them. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

12 " Religion’s just politics with higher stakes, Tak. You know that, you saw it in action on Sharya. No reason these people can’t do the same when it comes to the crunch. These people are sheep. They’ll do whatever their holy men tell them. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

13 " Part of running a successful tyranny is knowing when and how to let your subjects off the leash, and at this the First Families were accomplished masters. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

14 " You know, the aspirants believe this is the only true existence. That everything outside is an illusion, a shadow play created by the ancestor gods to cradle us until we can build our own tailored reality and Upload into it. That’s comforting, isn’t it. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

15 " A robe-straining belly offered itself. I stepped in and the Tebbit knife leapt upward, unzipping. I went eye to eye with the man I was gutting. A lined, bearded visage glared back. I could smell his breath. Our faces were centimetres apart for what seemed like minutes before the realisation of what I had done detonated behind his eyes. I jerked a nod, felt the twitch of a smile in one clamped corner of my mouth. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

16 " You’d think, given a planet nine-tenths covered in water and a solar system with no other habitable biospheres, that people would be careful with that real estate. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

17 " You’d think they’d develop an intelligent approach to land allocation and use. You’d think they wouldn’t fight stupid little wars over large areas of useful terrain, wouldn’t deploy weaponry that would render the theater of operations useless to human habitation for centuries to come. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

18 " Yukio was angry because he was. Because he was an asshole male with delusions of status just like Dad, just like the rest of them, and I’d humiliated him in front of Plex and Tanaseda. Because he was an asshole male just like the rest of them, in fact, and rage was the default setting. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

19 " The priest I didn’t talk to at all, because I didn’t want to have to hide his body afterwards. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)

20 " He is as corrupt as the rest of them. As all the materialists.’ ‘Yeah, but give him his due. If his daughter ever gets raped, he’s unlikely to beat her to death for dishonouring him.’ She flinched. ‘You are talking about an isolated incident, this is not—’ ‘Four.’ I held out my fingers, rigid in front of her face. ‘I’m talking about four isolated incidents. And that’s just this year. "

― Richard K. Morgan , Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs, #3)