158 Quotes by Richard K. Morgan

They are what we once dreamed of as gods, mythical agents of destiny, as inescapable as Death, that poor old peasant laborer, bent over his scythe, no longer is. Poor Death, no match for the mighty altered-carbon technologies of data storage and retrieval arrayed against him. Once we lived in terror of his arrival. Now we flirt outrageously with his somber dignity, and beings like these won’t even let him in the tradesman’s entrance.

She wanted to do damage, gashed red, bleeding, and screaming damage to all and any of the bland facets of social restraint that meshed her about like spiderweb.

Religion is religion, however you wrap it, and like Quell says, a preoccupation with the next world pretty clearly signals an inability to cope credibly with this one.

Choose your feelings as you would a weapon. This is what it is to be Majak.

Pull on the cold, clinking mail of your professional detachment, Archeth Indamaninarmal, inhabit it until it starts to feel warm and accustomed, and in time you’ll forget you’re wearing it at all. You’ll only notice when it works, when it stops you feeling the steel-edged bite of something that might otherwise have gotten through and done you some damage. And then you’ll just grin and shiver and shake off the blow, like warriors do.

When they ask how I died,” I said. “Tell them: Still Angry.

A Man Down Is Not a Man Dead. Leave No Stack Behind.

Worse fates than being forced into a place where your choice of acts is limited to those where your soul burns brightest.

An-Kirilnar is.” The Helmsman stopped dead, so abruptly that it took her a moment to realize there were no more words coming. Flicker of shifting light across the optics, there and gone. But this time she saw it for certain. “Angfal?” “Quests are pretexts, Archeth. They are tales told, narrative blankets to wrap you against the cold you cannot bear.