223 Quotes by Alastair Reynolds

  • Author Alastair Reynolds
  • Quote

    The stability of the Glitter Band depends on social cohesion, Mister Garlin. We don’t have standing armies, we don’t have a citizen militia. Even the local constabularies constitute a vanishingly small proportion of our population. But this system only functions in the absence of malicious fear-mongering. I have no time for those who disseminate lies and half-truths for their own ends.

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  • Author Alastair Reynolds
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    You worry that we’re becoming monsters. Merlin, we already were monsters. You didn’t make us any worse.

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

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  • Author Alastair Reynolds
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    Oh, I’m not perfect – not by a long stretch. I just make the rest of you look bad.

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  • Author Alastair Reynolds
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    The human capacity for grief. It just isn’t capable of providing an adequate emotional response once the dead exceed a few dozen in number. And it doesn’t just level off – it just gives up, resets itself to zero.

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  • Author Alastair Reynolds
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    My people are impressing on Tulwar’s people the wisdom of surrender and a rapid shift of allegiance. I’m counting on most them being opportunist thugs who’ll recognize a good thing when it’s offered to them.

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  • Author Alastair Reynolds
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    Volyova did not like planets at the best of times, and gas giants struck her as an unreasonable affront to human scale and frailty. In that respect, they were almost as bad as stars.

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  • Author Alastair Reynolds
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    Birth and death frame a life, give it shape. Without that border it just becomes a kind of sprawling mess, a thing with no edge, no definition, no centre.

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