Alastair Reynolds Quotes

Nightside, cities glistened in chains, and a spray of tinkertoy habitats girdled the planet. Gossamer starbridges reached from the equator towards orbit.

I think I've reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level.

Victory loses its meaning without the memory of what you've vanquished.

As the old saying went, the Manhattan Project wasn't built in a day. Or was that Rome? Something to do with Earth, anyway.

A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy.

You worry that we're becoming monsters. Merlin, we already were monsters. You didn't make us any worse.

Enjoy it, kid. Enjoy feeling that you can make a difference.' Floyd flashed him a smile. 'It won't last for ever.

I really struggle to pinpoint whether I became a scientist because I like science fiction, or did I gravitate to science fiction because I identified strongly with scientists.

The cards always look different when it's your turn to play them; loaded with subtly different possibilities.

It's an ancient technique known as lying, Khouri.

I never wanted to be "a writer"; I only ever aspired to be an science fiction writer. They'll tear that badge out of my cold dead hands.

Autocratic governments are masters of self-contradiction. They say one thing, do another.

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.

Without risk in our lives, we're scarcely better than machines ourselves.

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

Without risk in our lives, we’re scarcely better than machines ourselves.

I'm not a morning person: I can't function until I've had a coffee - or several.

No act of knowledge acquisition is entirely without risk.

Nothing had ever existed between us except the possibility of something, and now even that was over.

Still, it was vision, or at least vision’s idiot cousin.

Sluka shook her head. "We're talking about them in the past tense, and we never even discussed them in the present. It's like their only reason for existing was so they could die.

It is always better to try and fail than not to try.

You're confident he'll have found him, then?""Well, no. I didn't sat that.""If there's one thing I hate, " Volyova said, looking coldly at the other Triumvir, "it's mindless optimism.

It's called optimism — but I’m losing the hang of it fast.

It’s not how far you’ve come that matters. It’s where you’ve come from.

Half of all the great art and literature in existence went unrecognised during the lifetimes of its creators.

History is what we write, not what we remember. Why should we tarnish the memory of our planet by enshrining our less then noble deeds?