69 Quotes by Ian McDonald

You collect art: you must know that the miniature artists, at the end of careers spent painting the tiniest, most exacting details that no one would ever look at, would often put their eyes out with needles. Too much beauty, yes, but also too much seeing. They were tired of seeing. The dark was safe and warm and comfortable. Blindness was a gift. I still have seeing to do.

If you want to write, you must write experience. What it is to be that thing. There is everything in a moment.

The men had to use condoms. You didn’t want to get hit by that stuff, flying. I said be kind and I did something worse than flying cum. I threw up all over him. I couldn’t stop throwing up. That’s not sexy.

He's never fought with religion; what is the point of railing against such beauty, such intimate theatre, such chime of eternity? He can treasure it without believing in it.

Family is what works.

I realised that the moon was not a safe place. It knew a thousand ways to kill you if you were stupid, if you were careless, if you were lazy, but the real danger was the people around you. The moon was not a world, it was a submarine. Outside was death. I would be sealed in with these people. There was no law, no justice: there was only management. The moon was the frontier, but it was the frontier to nothing. There was nowhere to run.

When dragons fight, everyone burns.

Babies are tedious. Kids only start to become human on their fifth birthday.

All the mystery we need surrounds us at every moment in a cloud of wonders, small and great and only manifest when we look at them.