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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| f7f77b3 | If they want you, a youngish Quell had once written of the Harlan's World ruling elite, sooner or later they'll scoop you up off the globe, like specks of interesting dust off a Martian artifact. Cross the gulf between the stars, and they can come after you. Go into centuries of storage, and they'll be there waiting for you, clone new, when you resleeve. They are what we once dreamed of as gods, mythical agents of destiny, as inescapable as.. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 33f2ca2 | I'd rather you didn't smoke in here." "[...]I'd rather you died of an internal haemorrhage, but I don't suppose you'll oblige me." | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 55b8079 | When I looked at the curve of her hips and thighs on the window shelf, I could feel the way she had writhed back against me so clearly it was almost virtual. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| a798e24 | He storms down in savage joy, to meet all the waiting blades and hate. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| ab90272 | Screams powering down to sobbing. The sickly stench of charred flesh made it across in ribbons to where I lay. It was like a homecoming. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 7f76091 | And for the moments that the embrace lasted, and a little while after, I felt as clean as the breeze coming in off the sea. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 0165f57 | Kristin, nothing ever does change." I jerked a thumb back at the crowd outside. "You'll always have morons like that, swallowing belief patterns whole so they don't have to think for themselves. You'll always have people like Kawahara and the Bancrofts to push their buttons and cash in on the program. People like you to make sure the game runs smoothly and the rules don't get broken too often. And when the Meths want to break the rules them.. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 693103c | You'll let your life, the most precious thing you have, be stolen from you hour by hour and day by day as long as you can eke out the existence your males will let you have. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 271da37 | Anyone who builds satellites we can't shoot down needs to be taken seriously and, if they ever come back for their hardware, be approached with caution. That's not religion, it's common sense. Quellcrist Falconer Metaphysics for Revolutionaries | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 06c4d27 | The difference between virtuality and life is very simple. In a construct you know everything is being run by an all-powerful machine. Reality doesn't offer this assurance, so it's very easy to develop the mistaken impression that you're in control. Quellcrist Falconer Ethics on the Precipice | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| b0c2127 | In any agenda, political or otherwise, there is a cost to be borne. Always ask what it is, and who will be paying. If you don't, then the agenda-makers will pick up the perfume of your silence like swamp panthers on the scent of blood, and the next thing you know, the person expected to bear the cost will be you. And you may not have what it takes to pay. Quellcrist Falconer Things I Should Have Learnt By Now Vol II | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| d320673 | First the hypnos, pulsing their sonocodes until the dull gray ceiling grew abruptly fascinating with fishtail swirls of light, and meaning drained out of the universe like dirty water from a sink. And then I was Elsewhere. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 63b7f88 | War is like any other bad relationship. Of course you want out, but at what price? And perhaps more importantly, once you get out, will you be any better off? QUELLCRIST FALCONER Campaign Diaries | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| c65c93f | The eyes, set in jet skin, were a startling pale green. Kadmin had freed himself from conventional perceptions of the physical. In an earlier age, he would have been a shaman; here, the centuries of technology had made him more. An electronic demon, a malignant spirit that dwelled in altered carbon and emerged only to possess flesh and wreak havoc. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 2389d62 | You don't trust me?' 'Now you come to mention it, no. But that isn't it. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 29ae445 | I've talked to the lawyers.' 'Did you disinfect afterwards? | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 3be7cb1 | The storage tubes were racked on heavy chains like torpedoes on either side of us, jacked into a central monitor system at one end of the hold via thick black cables that twisted across the floor like pythons. The monitor unit itself squatted heavily ahead of us like an altar to some unpleasant spider god. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 2d881f2 | Look," she told me one day in a Millsport coffeehouse. "Shopping--actual, physical shopping--could have been phased out centuries ago if they'd wanted it that way." "They who?" "People. Society." She waved a hand impatiently. "Whoever. They had the capacity back then. Mail order, virtual supermarkets, automated debiting systems. It could have been done and it never happened. What does that tell you?" At twenty-two years old, a Marine Corps .. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| f81ff29 | My gaze slipped out past the breakers. The ocean beyond was black and secret, merging seamlessly with the night a scant distance out from the shore. Even the massive bulk of the keeled-over Free Trade Enforcer was hard to make out. I imagined Mary Lou Hinchley hurtling down to her shattering impact with the unyielding water, then slipping broken beneath the swells to be cradled in wait for the sea's predators. How long had she been out ther.. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 396f096 | And he remembered then where he was, remembered how he'd come to be there, the years it had taken, and last of all he remembered he was old. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 0286d62 | The personal, as everyone's so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here--it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin... | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| a0821a9 | You're wrong, Hand," I said quietly. "I'd love to have access to all this shit you believe. I'd love to be able to summon someone who's responsible for this fuckup of a creation. Because then I'd be able to kill them. Slowly." *" -- | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| dc60cd2 | He'd already made her for Kiriath and was backing off like a poet asked to wash dishes. Ringil | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| a8c32a6 | she said, a little bitterly, facing him in warm perfumed bathwater one evening, | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 00beac8 | Do I look like a fucking slave to you?" he asked them. And though, finally, they would bring him down with sheer weight of numbers, none who heard him ask that question lived to see the dawn." | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 732c925 | Forget uniforms or nominal allegiances--if it wears a weapon and scars, it's no safer than the next starving wild dog. Feed and water with care, walk like you're carrying dragon eggs, and never, never get between rival packs. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| a2565cc | When a forty-minute swim in the Hendrix's underground pool failed to dispel either the longing for Miriam Bancroft's torrid company or the Merge Nine hangover, I did the only thing I felt equipped for. I ordered painkillers from room service, and went shopping. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 564baba | I feel like a | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 57f9708 | the sweat and bloodstained wood of the cross he died on. He kicks in the frosted-glass door of a coffee franchise off Wall Street and beats seven shades of damnation out of the money changers gathered there. Painted, black-stockinged lady brokers twisting prostrate at his feet, red licked lips parted in horror and abandonment, thighs exposed under short, whorish skirts. Fat, big-nosed men in suits braying and panicking, trying to get away f.. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| dbeeb0b | They're brutal, moronic, they have the ethical consciousness of apes and the initiative levels of sheep. But you took the field against the reptiles for them nonetheless. Why?" Ringil" | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 817878b | Knowledge tossed away," she said, shivering a little in the desert chill. "Willful ignorance in the face of something we might have to work to understand." At" | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 3d9102f | The skeins are tangled. Some butterfly shaman up in the north beats his puny fucking wings and the storm gathers before you know it. Chaos gathers, like a bad poet's verse. We run damage control, but the rules of engagement have changed. You think we're any happier about it than you? We've got our balls to the wall here, hero. We're fighting half blind, nothing works, not the way it should, not anymore. Which | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 23e7ed3 | I mean." She wasn't listening to him, didn't look at him. Her hand went on clenching and unclenching, making loose, gentle fists in the air one after the other. "If the Chinese or maybe the Indians had come and just chased us out of the driver's seat, you know I could maybe handle that. Every culture has to give way to something in the end. Someone fresher and sharper always comes along. But we fucking did this to ourselves. We let the gras.. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 7a0d658 | The personal, as everyone's so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here--it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin... | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 2faa210 | ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life, and that it's nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal. QUELLCRIST FALCONER Things I Should Have Learned by Now Volume II There | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 16c23d9 | You wouldn't have to be insane to do these things. You'd just have to have a goal and be determined to attain it. Let's get this straight, early on. What we've seen aboard Horkan's Pride are not the symptoms of insanity; they are only evidence of great force of will. Evidence of planning and execution shorn of any socially imposed limitation. Any mental problems this person was suffering by journey's end are going to be a result of that exe.. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 252a8af | Rumor ran in the slum streets of Trelayne like sewage in the gutters, mingled and colorful in its contents, but mostly shit. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 6a887b1 | cordite-reeking | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 36d8e8b | Take what is offered, and that must sometimes be enough. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| da19c13 | officious. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 6f9c0f6 | It was the single forgiving phrase in the syntax of weaponry I had strapped about me. The rest were unequivocal sentences of death. The | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 53cf7b7 | Too much virtuality will do that to you sometimes. There's this vague feeling of abrasion in the head when you disconnect, a disquieting sense that reality isn't quite sharp enough anymore, a waxing and waning fuzziness that might be what the edge of madness feels like. The | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| c7658f4 | about the blood; it isn't yours. You put this flesh on a couple of days ago, and you'll be taking it off again soon if you can manage not to get killed first. Don't worry about wounds; check your functionality. | Richard K. Morgan | ||
| 5185d9f | There were always the stories, of course, the war legends, but who-- other than himself, in Jhesh's tavern, increasingly wearily--still told those? | Richard K. Morgan |