Alastair Reynolds

“Maybe it’s not as bad as she fears. Old people always think the world is going to ruin. It’s their job.”

“Maybe they’re right,” Floyd replied.

But when she tried to say something, the words always seemed trite and inadequate. Nothing measured up. When any moment might be their last, there was nothing she could ever imagine saying that had the necessary dignity to fill that instant. Silence was better. Silence had its own dignity.

I’m fed up with everyone being lied to just because the administration thinks it’s in our best interests not to know all the facts.

“But of course, you don’t believe in the existence of sin, do you?”

“I believe in the existence of reckless stupidity,” Rashmika replied.

“I’ll survive,” Floyd said. “I’m a private detective. If I don’t get clouted on the head at least once a week, I’m not doing my job properly.”

The virus was not helping. He had hoped that it would, but the feelings it brought were too superficial. When he most needed their succour he could feel them for the paper-thin façades they were. Just because the virus was tickling the parts of his brain that produced feelings of religious experience didn’t mean he was able to turn off the other parts of his mind that recognised these feelings as having been induced artificially. He truly felt himself to be in the presence of something sacred, but he also knew, with total clarity, that this was due to neuroanatomy. Nothing was really with him: the organ music, the stained-glass windows in the sky, the sense of proximity to something huge and timeless and infinitely compassionate were all explicable in terms of neural wiring, firing potentials, synaptic gaps.

No one ever took music away from me, but I’m damned if it ever sounds quite as good as it used to when I was twenty.

He’s not really a religious man, but he knows which side his bread’s buttered on. The churches pay his salary, so he doesn’t want anyone rocking the boat with unorthodox rumours.

“I thought debate was supposed to be healthy,” she countered.

“It is,” Auger replied, “so long as you don’t disagree with me.”

“Is that as bad as it sounds?” Floyd asked.

“No,” Auger said. “It’s worse. A lot worse.”

The future might have been crammed with miracles and wonders, but it also offered truly awesome opportunities for screwing up.

“I feel as if I’m missing all the excitement.”

”In my experience,” Tunguska said, making himself a temporary seat, “excitement is always better when it happens to other people.”