Against A Dark Background

Quotes

1. Hope could be more painful than despair.

   p. 474

2. 

   Sorry? Of course he was sorry. People were always sorry. Sorry they had done what they had done, sorry they were doing what they were doing, sorry they were going to do what they were going to do; but they still did whatever it was. The sorrow never stopped them; it just made them feel better. And so the sorrow never stopped. Fate, I’m sick of it all...

   Sorrow be damned, and all your plans. Fuck the faithful, fuck the committed, the dedicated, the true believers; fuck all the sure and certain people prepared to maim and kill whoever got in their way; fuck every cause that ended in murder and a child screaming.

   p. 484

3. 

   Molgarin shook his head. “Oh dear,” he said. Something worse than cynicism must be abroad if even our aristocracy cannot accept that the rich and powerful may be motivated by purposes beyond acquiring yet more money and increased influence.” He put his head to one side, as though genuinely puzzled. “Can’t you see, Lady Sharrow? Once one has a certain amount of both, one turns to hobbies, or good works or philosophy. Some people become patrons of the arts or charities. Others may—charitably—be said to raise their own lives to the state of art, living as the common herd imagine they would live if they had the chance. And some of us attempt not merely to understand our history, but to influence meaningfully the course of the future.”

   p. 432

4. 

   When you have this sort of power, this responsibility, you can’t choose not to have it when the decisions become tough. You can’t afford to prevaricate or delegate; you have to be engaged. You can’t stay neutral; you can say you’re neutral, and try to act as though you are, but that neutrality will always help one side more than the other; that’s just the way power works...the leverage it exerts.

   p. 271

5. 

   “Probably end up as one of those sordid cult leaders,” Zefla said after a while as they plodded into a bare area of the forest where a fire had left thousands of tree trunks standing upright and bare, black posts already surrounded by slender young trees forcing their way towards the sky around them. “You know, pedalling some weird concoction of re-tread gibberish and living in a palace while their followers sleep shifts and work the streets and give you this big flatline smile when you tell them where to stuff their tracts.”

   p. 395

6. 

   Allow me to attenuate my portentousness for you.

   p. 298

7. 

   “Choice,” he said heavily. A small smile disturbed his face. “We all think we have so much of that, don’t we?”

   p. 367

8. 

   “Details matter, though, don’t you think?” he said. “Sometimes what appear to be utterly inconsequential actions have the most enormous results. Chance makes the casual momentous. It is the fulcrum upon which the levers of action rest.”

   p. 298

9. 

   Is there anything I can do? Just tell me.

   What can you do?

   Destroy things. All I can do is destroy things. It’s the only thing I’m any good at. Would you like me to destroy something?

   I want you to destroy everything! she screamed. Every fucking thing. All the evil men and compliant women, all the armies and companies and cults and faiths and orders and every stupid fucker in them! All of them! EVERYTHING!

   p. 427

10. 

    “I think,” she said carefully, “that perhaps too many people want things to be simple when they are not and cannot be. Encouraging that desire is seductive and rewarding, but also dangerous.”

    p. 299

11. 

    “No, Geis, it doesn’t wear off. Like certain exotic diseases, and unlike love, synchroneurobonding is for life.”

    Geis lowered his eyes. “You weren’t always so cynical about love.”

    “As they say; ignorance pays.”

    p. 15

12. 

    “He might come in useful,” Cenuij said.

    “Yeah,” Zefla said. “So’s a broken leg if you want to kick yourself in the back of the head.”

    p. 202

13. 

    Geis is a pain, Sharrow; the guy has a kind of charming facade but basically he’s a social inadequate whose real place in life is out mugging pensioners and cheating and beating on his girlfriends, and if he had three more names and been raised in a rookery in the The Meg rather than the nursery at house Tzant, that’s exactly what he would be doing. Instead he jumps out of the commercial equivalent of dark allies, strips companies and fucks their employees. He’s got no idea how real people work so he plays the market instead; he’s a rich kid who thinks the banks and courts and Corps are his construction set and he doesn’t want anybody else to play. He wants you the way he wants a sexy company, as a bauble, a scalp, something to display. Never get beholden to people like that, they’ll piss on you and then charge irrigation fees.

    p. 52

14. 

    “How are you?”

    “I am here.”

    “Apart from that,” she said levelly.

    “There is no apart from that.”

    p. 38

15. 

    “Anyway,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

    “Indeed. I can see contrition oozing from your every pore.”

    p. 59

16. 

    “So,” he said to the monk, “you are of an Order which also despises the Great Infernal Wizard.”

    “Indeed, your gracious Majesty,” the monk said, looking down modestly at the carpet. His voice sounded respectful. “Our Belief—perhaps not so dissimilar from your own, more venerable and more widely followed creed, is that God is a Mad Scientist and we His experimental subjects, doomed forever to run the Maze of Life through apparently random and unjust punishments for meaningless and paltry rewards and no discernible good reason save His evil pleasure.”

    p. 228

17. 

    Perhaps it was simply bad luck, but despite the fact the sheer capability of the Guns ought to have ensured their owner could effectively become ruler of the entire system, the weapons had invariably been the downfall of whoever had come into possession of them.

    p. 109

18. 

    She felt cold and battered and tired. This combat flying lark was supposed to have been just a little exotic incident in her life, something to tell people about when she was old. It had never been meant to get this important, never been planned to be this crucial and ghastly and hopeless. It certainly wasn’t supposed to be the end of everything. It couldn’t all just end, could it?

    Yes it could, she thought. Somehow she’d never really thought about it before, but yes; of course it could. She didn’t just accept it now; she knew it now. What a time to learn that particular lesson.

    p. 219

19. 

    “Put plainly, I am not at liberty to divulge that information. There, it is said. Let us quickly move on from this unfortunate quantum of dissonance to the ground-state of accord which I trust will inform our future relationship.”

    “So you’re not going to tell me.” Sharrow nodded.

    “My dear lady,” the machine said, continuing to trundle after her. “Without saying so in so many words...correct.”

    p. 19

20. 

    “Aah...Yes, and how does madam wish to pay?”

    She slapped her credit card on the counter. “Eventually.”

    p. 172

That’s all the quotes.

20 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more