364 Quotes by Charles Stross

I have no policy, for or against: only a personal style. Which is to say, I use them when I think it’s appropriate to; for example, an internal monologue by a locquacious and verbose narrator is more likely to be larded with adverbs than an exchange of instant messages between cops at a crime scene.

I don’t want to permanently damage myself! On the other hand, a couple of days off the keyboard tends to make things somewhat better.

Horror fiction allows us to confront and sublimate our fears of an uncontrollable universe, but the threat verges on the overwhelming and may indeed carry the protagonists away. Spy fiction in contrast allows us to believe for a while that the little people can, by obtaining secret knowledge, acquire some leverage over the overwhelming threats that permeate their universe.

I’d like to be proven wrong firstly on the difficulty of building a self-sustaining closed circuit ecosystem in space that can support human life.

The dirty little secret of the intelligence-gathering job is that information doesn’t just want to be free – it wants to hang out on street corners wearing gang colors and terrorizing the neighbors.

But I had fallen among pirates and life insurance underwriters.

Georgina darts forward, grabs my hand, and pumps it up and down while peering at my face as if she’s wondering why water isn’t gushing from my mouth.

Back before the internet we had a name for people who bought a single copy of our books and lent them to all their friends without charging: we called them “librarians”.

The Denizen of Number 10 is the avatar – the humanoid sock-puppet – of an ancient and undying intelligence who regards mere humanity much as we might regard a hive of bees. Our lives are of no individual concern to Him, but He likes honey.