90 Quotes by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I have a vision of tomorrow’s war, between people who have made themselves the slaves of entities that only exist in the heads of men, and people who want to be free. I hope I am wrong.

The entire elaborate operation looked good on paper to anyone who didn’t suspect he’d gone through it solely because he wanted more space for fishtanks.

Negotiations with the locals have gone sufficiently well –now that Portia and her party have established their superiority –and the incumbents have lent the three travellers a male to serve as a guide in the lands to the north.

They are performing that oldest of tricks: constructing a path by which to reach a destination, only in this case the destination is permanent security. With each step they take towards it, that security recedes. And, with each step they take, the cost of progressing towards such security grows, and the actions required to move forward become more and more extreme.

The sun had been so much brighter then, in his memories. It had shone every day.

The act of courtship is consummated as a public ritual, where the hopeful males – in their moment of prominence – perform in front of a peer group, or even the whole city, before the female chooses her partner and accepts his package of sperm. She may then kill and eat him, which is thought to be a great honour for the victim, although even Portia suspects that the males do not quite see it that way.

The acerbic computer helpfully attaches a legend identifying just which pieces of the wreckage are Meshner and Fabian, because she always has computing power for put-downs.

It is a great poison, to know you have a destiny and that everything you do is right by default.

Are they wondering if Lain and I will save them by being here? Because, if so, they weren’t listening to Guyen closely enough before.