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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| cc1052e | It's the kind of outfit one wears in the hope of meeting someone who'll help you out of it | Charles Stross | ||
| b52ca19 | There is cold comfort to be drawn from the sure and certain knowledge that the correct way to deal with the problem you're facing in your job involves napalm, if you find yourself confronting a dragon and you aren't even carrying a cigarette lighter. | Charles Stross | ||
| 1c277df | Nobody taught me how to say no when a beautiful naked woman begs me to take my clothes off. | Charles Stross | ||
| b8fb316 | The informational density of the inner planets is visibly converging on Avogadro's number of bits per mole, one bit per atom, | Charles Stross | ||
| d271482 | when you stare into the void, the void stares also; but if you cast into the void, you get a type conversion error. | Charles Stross | ||
| 62db2fd | Sorry, I should have warned you." Apologies are the keystone of an enduring relationship. Failing to apologize for mistakes, or getting onto a treadmill of belittling insults, is a bad warning sign. So far we've avoided it, but . " | Charles Stross | ||
| f45ace9 | And now my blood ran cold. Because if there's one thing worse than an IT manager who's feeling the chill wind of obsolescence blowing down his neck and consequently trying to contribute code to the repository like an actual working developer, it's an IT manager who's getting creative. | Charles Stross | ||
| 119b28c | Back to my question: is it better to reign in Hell--or should I aspire to be a citizen in the early years of a better nation? | Charles Stross | ||
| 8cc8949 | Crawling eldritch horrors don't get planning permission unless they're Trump's hairpiece.) That | Charles Stross | ||
| 5814863 | Yippee. I haven't had this much fun since I was in the Transhuman Police, mixing it up with superpowered neo-Nazis, and by fun I mean fuck me I demand a pay rise and a nice quiet office job-- | Charles Stross | ||
| 8b0e464 | History is written by the survivors, a narrative they compose to explain events to themselves. So the historicity of journals like this one--their accuracy and authenticity--is a function of the reliability of the narrator | Charles Stross | ||
| b21acb5 | The PM smiles, and for a moment I see a flickering vision where His face should be: an onion-skin Matryoshka doll of circular shark-toothed maws, lizard-man faces, and insectile hunger. "A word in my study if you don't mind. Right this way." | Charles Stross | ||
| 3d6a3d7 | the sacrificial repository at Arlington | Charles Stross | ||
| 5f3baf8 | It's as exhausting as dealing with an early-stage dementia sufferer--one with a trillion-pound budget and nuclear-weapons-release authority. | Charles Stross | ||
| a9363ca | The Denizen of Number 10 is the avatar--the humanoid sock-puppet--of an ancient and undying intelligence who regards mere humanity much as we might regard a hive of bees. Our lives are of no individual concern to Him, but He likes honey. | Charles Stross | ||
| 0f14d1e | Are they by any chance a quiverfull ministry?" Pete's lips thin. "Yes." The word "quiverfull" sets my alarm bells ringing, and clearly upsets Mo. It goes back to Psalm 127, which refers to having many children as having a full quiver. They're arrows for the Lord, and a number of evangelical churches have adopted the theory that you can never have too much ammunition." | Charles Stross | ||
| d5a87db | His remit will be to monitor the use of reality-modification weapons by both sides in the conflict and to assure the civilized worlds that the New Republic does not engage in gratuitous use of time travel as a weapon of mass destruction. | Charles Stross | ||
| 681b93c | It's almost as if Congress has no idea that a giant occult power struggle for control of the US government is in progress ... or perhaps it's over already, and a ruthless media clamp-down by tongue-eating mind control parasites is the only thing keeping the world from learning about the takeover of DC by gibbering alien nightmares. | Charles Stross | ||
| 69fbc6e | Apparently you're only allowed to demolish Wolverhampton if you're a property developer like Donald Trump. Crawling eldritch horrors don't get planning permission unless they're Trump's hairpiece.) | Charles Stross | ||
| eeacacc | either they're trying to upsell you a fifty-quid-a-head artisanal pork pie (serving this week: Peppa Pig's Uncle Bertie's left haunch, marinaded in a drizzle of preschoolers' tears) or | Charles Stross | ||
| 5cb0883 | Although now that I'm in middle management I'm supposed to call it "refactoring the strategic value proposition in real time with agile implementation," or, if I'm being honest, "making it up as I go along." | Charles Stross | ||
| 1d8d461 | She spoke the language of the Scottish Highlands (which is like singing). | Susanna Clarke | ||
| ea70c7c | In 1819 the proudest man in all of England was , without a doubt , the Duke of Wellington . This was not particularly surprising ; when a man has twice defeated the armies of the wicked French Emperor , Napoleon Bonaparte , it is only natural that he should have a rather high opinion of himself . | napoleon-bonaparte | Susanna Clarke | |
| 95b45d2 | Ha!" he thought. "That will teach me to meddle with magic meant for kings! Norrell is right. Some magic is not meant for ordinary magicians. Presumably John Uskglass knew what to do with this horrible knowledge. I do not. Should I tell someone? The Duke? He will not thank me for it." | Susanna Clarke | ||
| bd672c3 | He thought he stood upon an English hillside. Rain was falling; it twisted in the air like grey ghosts. Rain fell upon him and he grew thin as rain. Rain washed away thought, washed away memory, all the good and the bad. He no longer knew his name. Everything was washed away like mud from a stone. Rain filled him up with thoughts and memories of its own. Silver lines of water covered the hillside, like intricate lace, like the veins of an a.. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 05404c1 | She took a step forward, and so did the unknown woman. Suddenly realization and relief came upon her in equal measures; "It is a mirror! Oh! How foolish! How foolish! To be afraid of my own reflection!" She was so relieved she almost laughed out loud, but then she paused; it had not been foolish to be frightened, not foolish at all; " | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 8f19da2 | After all," he thought, "what can a magician do against a lead ball? Between the pistol firing and his heart exploding, there is no time for magic." | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 8703b2f | Mr Norrell, it is not the duty of the court - any court - to exalt one person's opinions above others! Not in magic nor in any other sphere of life. If other magicians think differently from you, then you must battle it out with them. You must prove the superiority of your opinions, as I do in politics. You must argue and publish and practise your magic and you must learn to live as I do - in the face of constant criticism, opposition and c.. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| c8ae34b | Who was it that said a magician needs the subtlety of a Jesuit, the daring of a soldier and the wits of a thief? I believe it was meant for a insult, but it has some truth in it. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| c2ab062 | But the veterans of the Peninsular War remarked approvingly that rain was always an Englishman's friend in times of war. They told their comrades: "There is nothing so comforting or familiar to us, you see - whereas other nations it baffles." | Susanna Clarke | ||
| cb911a4 | Mr Robinson was a polished sort of person. He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything that he positively shone - which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| b3154b5 | Bright yellow leaves flowed swiftly upon the dark, almost-black water, making patterns as they went. To Mr. Segundus the patterns looked a little like magical writing. 'But then,' he thought, 'So many things do. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 9fd8f51 | The backs of their heads were hollowed out; their faces were nothing but thin masks at the front. Within each hollow a candle was burning. This was so plain to him now, that he wondered he had never noticed it before. He imagined what would happen if he went down into the street and blew some of the candles out. It made him laugh to think of it. He laughed so much that he could no longer stand. His laughter echoed round and round the house... | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 932290d | I hope you will write occasionally? Some token of your impressions?" "Oh! I shall not spare you. It is the right of a traveller to vent their frustration at every minor inconvenience by writing of it to their friends. Expect long descriptions of everything." | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 4f211b8 | Other countries have stories of kings who will return at times of great need. Only in England is it part of the constitution. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| bdb72b7 | the more apparatus a magician carries about with him - coloured powders, stuffed cats, magical hats and so forth - the greater the fraud you will eventually discover him to be!" And what, inquired Mr Horrocks politely, were the few tools that a magician did require? "Why! Nothing really," said Mr Norrell. "Nothing but a silver basin for seeing visions in." | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 42479e1 | I hope there may be bogs and that John McKenzie may drown in them. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 018f62d | Believe me when I tell you that ten, twenty, even fifty years of silence is worth the satisfaction of knowing at the end that you have said what you ought - no more, no less. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 92b0885 | More than one soldier wondered if, at last, the French had found a magician of their own; the French infantrymen appeared much taller than ordinary men and the light in their eyes as they drew closer burnt with an almost supernatural fury. But this was only the magic of Napoleon Buonaparte, who knew better than any one how to dress his soldiers so they would terrify the enemy, and how to deploy them so that any onlooker would think them ind.. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 91875ad | Fairies do not make a strong distinction between the animate and the inanimate. They believe that stones, doors, trees, fire, clouds and so forth all have souls and desires, and are either masculine or feminine. Perhaps this explains the extraordinary sympathy for madness which fairies exhibit. For example, it used to be well known that when fairies hid themselves from general sight, lunatics were often able to perceive them. The | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 2468dfe | Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 603c635 | Let us see," said Saint Oswald. "A man in black clothes, with powerful magic and ravens at his command, and the hunting rights of a king. This suggests nothing to you? No apparently it does not. Well, it so happens that I think I know the person you mean. He is indeed very arrogant and perhaps the time has come to humble him a little. If I understand you aright, you are angry because he does not speak to you?" "Yes." "Well then, I believe I.. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 3fce351 | The war went from bad to worse and the Government was universally detested. As each fresh catastrophe came to the public's notice some small share of blame might attach itself to this or that person, but in general everyone united in blaming the Ministers, and they, poor things, had no one to blame but each other - which they did more and more frequently. | Susanna Clarke | ||
| 4fd7694 | Mr Hawkins said nothing; the Hawkins' domestic affairs were arranged upon the principle that Fanny supplied the talk and he the silence. | language marriage | Susanna Clarke |