Alastair Reynolds

“Until recently we were a trio. Before that, a quartet. Perhaps it’s just me, but I’m beginning to detect a trend.”

“The central defect of the human mind,” Custine said, “is its unfortunate habit of seeing patterns where none exist. Of course, that is also its chief asset.”

“But sometimes a very dangerous one.”

Why was it never good news that put problems into perspective? Why did it always take another set of problems?

Nice girls don’t carry guns.

Maps had never really been his thing, even during his days under Scorpio in Chasm City. There, it had hardly mattered. Blood’s motto had always been that if you needed a map to find your way around a neighbourhood, you were already in trouble.

All machines knew what would happen to them when their masters lost faith in their infallibility.

There were choices to be made, harder choices than I would have liked, and I realised that I had been neglecting them because of their very difficulty.

But sanity, Vasko decided, was like the pattern of lights he could see through his cabin window. In almost any direction the only way to travel was into darkness, and there was a lot more darkness than light.

The simple fact was that she no longer hated them as a matter of principle. It was also a source of shameful amazement that she could ever have wasted so much energy on groundless prejudice, when acceptance and tolerance would have been the easier, even the lazier, course.

“That would require an unprecedented leap of faith.”

“I don’t do faith,” Scorpio said.

“The Fascists got what they deserved,” Floyd said.

“My husband lived long enough to see those monsters come to come to power. He saw through their lies and promises, but he also knew that they spoke to something nasty and squalid in the human spirit. Something in all of us. We want to hate those who are not like us. All we need is an excuse, a whisper in the ear.”

“Personally,” Scorpio said, “I think it’s time to stop thinking chivalry and start thinking artillery.”