Matt Hughes

Quotes

1. When all the good ideas have been expended, I quoted to myself, one might as well try a bad one.

   p. 222

2. 

   “Magic,” said my integrator, “has rules. At the heart of the willful, associative universe, we find a modicum of rationalism, just as we find uncertainty at the core of the rational cosmos.”

   “Exactly,” I said. “And there seems no other explanation for it than sheer perversity on the part of whatever entity is responsible for the whole untidy business.”

   I thought about it a moment more then said, “Perversity, or just a very idiosyncratic sense of humor.”

   p. 176

3. 

   When we have done more traveling together, you will come to see that occasionally we must be other than forthright with local authorities. Many of them lack imagination and react poorly to creativity and unexpected innovation.

   p. 154

4. 

   “Wealth tends to generate wealth,” he began.

   I gave a qualified assent. “If it does not instead give birth to folly.”

   p. 57

5. 

   “We should be frank with each other,” Lavelan said.

   It had been my experience that most conversations that were launched on such a declaration represented an attempt by the initiator to gain far more information than he intended to give.

   p. 97

6. 

   I reflected that the genial glow that surrounds the doer of a good deed loses some of its warmth and brightness when the recipient meets every action with the pinched face of suspicion.

   p. 48

7. 

   “The likelihood seems farfetched.”

   “So have several of the situations in which we have found ourselves in the recent past,” I said.

   “But you are resolved to avoid those kinds of situations in the future.”

   I made a gesture ripe with fatalism. “I have come to understand that the universe accords my resolutions a good deal less consideration than I would prefer.”

   p. 21

8. 

   It is as hugely irrelevant to us as the literary outpourings of a poet are to a bacterium living in his lower bowel. Indeed, to an even tinier mite living in the bacterium’s vacuole. It just doesn’t matter.

   p. 89

9. 

   I had no doubt that there was madness here. How could it be otherwise in a cosmos that was ordered solely by will? It did not mean that the insane would automatically rise to the apex of the social order; their efforts would be diffused by the randomness of the impulses that drove them. But those whose extraordinary powers of will propelled them to the heights of power and rank would always be vulnerable to going further than they should. And there would be none but their equally mad rivals to restrain them.

   p. 106

10. 

    “There are, occasionally, rarely, some…difficulties,” she admitted.

    “That is a word that may cover a great swath of territory,” I said, “from the low foothills of minor inconvenience to the insurmountable peaks of constant vexation.”

    p. 29

11. 

    “You ask if anyone has ‘tested the concept.’ But why would anyone test reality? Reality is not for testing, but for living with.”

    p. 86

12. 

    “I detected some quavers in his voice that indicated stress. But I would not say that he lied.”

    “Though it was not the whole truth.”

    “It never is. The ‘whole truth’ starts with the beginning of the world and its telling takes an inordinately long time.”

    p. 100