17 Quotes by Paul McAuley

How to tell a story? First find a point of view.

They celebrated in a bar, and after half a dozen cocktails came to the mutual decision that it would be a blast to get married. So Lisa bought a couple of rings in a pawnshop and they did the deed in the hotel chapel, reading their vows in Klingon off an iPhone in front of a guy in golden robes and Spock ears.

The things you people can do now!” Unlikely Worlds said. “The stories you make!

There are many stories,” Unlikely Worlds said, “but most follow similar patterns.

The tug of the lodestar slowly grew stronger until, with an abrupt quantum jump, it was a physical force prying at her mind. She felt everything else fall away, felt the same out-of-body swoon she’d experienced on First Foot when she’d stared too long at the star at the edge of the Badlands. Felt as if she was expanding beyond her body the room the ship into everywhere …

Even the straightest path has two directions.

Abulanam’s Pride emerged into a sky dominated by the heaven tree of a stellar nursery. Billowing thunderheads and swirling currents of sooty dust, silicate grains and gas aglow with the radiation of hot bright stars embedded in them. Ragged pillars, shaped by light and stellar winds, clawing across a dozen light years, spalling offshoots tipped with the blowsy haloes of stars birthing in collapsing knots of protostellar material. A vast, violent engine of creation.

That’s where we are,” he said. “One star amongst four hundred billion.

Where are we going?” Tony said. “Somewhere wonderful,” Unlikely Worlds said.