Ian Tregillis

Quotes

1. Every additional second the king didn’t take a bullet in the eye seemed a good sign.

2. 

   We’ve drawn attention to ourselves with our obsessive need to stay inconspicuous.

3. 

   It’s not my fault your makers made you humorless.

4. 

   The grotesque machine reassembled its head. The medical servitor stood, emitted a burst of ticktock cog chatter, then flung itself into the massacre with the fervor of a religious zealot.

5. 

   “What the hell was that?”

   “That was a close call wrapped in some very unpleasant philosophical questions.”

6. 

   I am a pragmatist, said Mab. I do what must be done to make a better world.

   “Oh, I’m sure you tell yourself that. But so does the woman who tortured Lilith. You sound exactly like her, in fact. The difference is that Berenice actually means it. She doesn’t use the pretense to justify her cruelty.”

7. 

   “If you’re going to insist on giving perfectly logical and reasonable answers to stupid questions,” she said, “you may put a dent in my delusions of genius.”

8. 

   “Sergeant,” she said as they mounted the stairs leading to her old apartments, “thank you for treating me like a human being. And, for what it’s worth, I am sorry about how this turned out.”

   He grunted. “It can’t be undone,” was all he said.

9. 

   It isn’t courtly politics if somebody doesn’t get a dagger in the back.

10. 

    Perhaps there really was a God, and He was just as cruel as the humans He made in His form.

11. 

    “You narrow-minded idiots have mistaken delaying the inevitable for a divinely bestowed right to survive…

    You aren’t noble survivors of a historical tragedy, you’re a lingering curiosity of a bygone age. The last vestige of a primitive past. Dust to be swept away. The difference between you and I, dear Berenice, is that I recognized the broom for what it was. And got out of the way.”

12. 

    He’d expected torture. He hadn’t expected surgery.