9 Quotes by Chris Beckett

And the weird weird thing about this story of Angela's Ring was that it didn't even have a point to it, no happy ending, no lesson to be learnt.It was like one person's cry of pain, echoing out on and on and on trough the generations, even after that person was long long dead.

Now you're being sentimental, Marija. You shouldn't waste your pity on machines! If you want to pity someone, pity the poor guestworker who's chucked out of the territory when they build a robot to do his job! Pity the janitors, the nightwatchmen, the dustcart drivers. My God, even the whores have been put out of business now! We live in a country where we even fuck machines!

The Holy ... Machine?" I mumbled. "Yes." She gave a little laugh. "A great miracle. He is a kind of robot, but God has given him a soul - and not an ordinary human soul either, but the soul of a saint or an angel!" "But ... I thought robots were ... bad ..." "Yes, of course, and Mary Magdalene was a whore. To God, all things are possible.

Which is the more useful, the scientific world-view, with all its wonderful technical miracles, or the religious world-view, with its sense of purpose and belonging?

Terrible things are done in the name of religion, without a doubt, but it was not religion but science that brought the world itself to the brink of destruction.

The way I figure it, here in New Earth, men’s power has won out over women’s power, just like it’s done on Mainground. But men still fear women’s power. No one ever forgets their mother’s power to give them nourishment or withhold it. And men specially don’t forget it, because they never grow into women themselves, and never lose a child’s craving for the comfort of women’s bodies.

Nothing looks more lovely than something that’s about to end, and that’s true even if you yourself are going to be the cause of its ending.

It was one of those moments when you wonder whether there is some kind of big misunderstanding and really this is all just a dream or a made-up story, and not the real world like you thought it was.

Watch out for men who want to turn everything into a story that’s all about them. There will always be a few of them, and once one of them starts, another one of them will want to fight with him.