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Charles Stross
294 quotes
“I think we may be mistaking the elephant’s tail for a bell-pull.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Human consciousness isn’t optimized for anything, except maybe helping feral hominids survive in the wild.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most police work boils down to minimizing the impact on society of stupidity; of the remainder, the overwhelming majority is about malice and deliberate evil, but it’s still almost all stupid.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am sick and tired of reality refusing to conform to the requirements of my meticulously-researched near-future or proximate-present fictions.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Curse of Laundry, October 19, 2014
“’Twas the night before Christmas, the office was closed,”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Had enough of my poetry yet? That’s why they pay me to fight demons instead.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Overtime (2009)
“Like the famous mad philosopher said, when you stare into the void, the void stares also; but if you cast into the void, you get a type conversion error. (Which just goes to show Nietzsche wasn't a C++ programmer.)”
Charles Stross (born 1964) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Overtime (2009)
“This is rural England, after all; please set your watches back thirty years…”
Charles Stross (born 1964) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Equoid (2013)
“I may not be a hero, but I'm not the fourteen-year-old H. P. Lovecraft either. Dealing with eldritch horrors is part of my day job. It’s not even as bad as the paperwork, for the most part.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Equoid (2013)
“Am I making myself clear?” I sit down again. “Yes, for very bureaucratic values of clear.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fred was a waste of airspace and one of the most powerful bogon emitters in the Laundry.” “Bogons?” “Hypothetical particles of cluelessness. Idiots emit bogons, causing machinery to malfunction in their presence. System administrators absorb bogons, letting machinery work again. Hacker folklore—”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t hate him—he’s just a bore but that isn’t a capital offense. Usually.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My impressions are of a huge stainless steel kitchen and Australian expat waiters on rollerblades beaming infrared orders and wide-eyed smiles at each other from handheld computers as they skate around the refectory tables, where earnest young things in tiny rectangular spectacles discuss Derrida’s influence on alcopop marketing via the next big dot-sad IPO, or whatever it is the “in” herd is obsessing about these days over their gyoza and organic buckwheat ramen.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I hate it when people let their professionalism get in the way of real life.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you want me to strangle him now, or wait till he’s finished annoying you?”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thank you for that reminder, Jimmy,” says Alan. “Any more compelling insights into why the laws of physics are not our friends?”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Didn’t they know that the only unhackable computer is one that’s running a secure operating system, welded inside a steel safe, buried under a ton of concrete at the bottom of a coal mine guarded by the SAS and a couple of armoured divisions, and switched off?”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m beyond introspective self-loathing by now—you lose it fast in this line of work.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bet you he’s a smart sociopath, the kind that does well in midlevel management, all fur coat and no knickers—and willing to shed blood without a second thought if it’s to defend his position.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some of the worst crimes against humanity are committed by architecture students.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m only twenty-eight: I’m too young to die and too old to drive fast.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have a feeling that a bored Ramona would be a very bad girl indeed, in a your-life-insurance-policy-just-expired kind of way.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They’ve sicced a demon on me.” “Jesus, Bob.” “Yeah, well, He isn’t answering the phone.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not only is the past another country, it’s one that doesn’t issue visas.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m still wearing my shoes, I realize. And I’m still wearing this fucking suit. I didn’t even take it off for the flight—I must be turning into a manager or something. I have a sudden urge to wash compulsively. At least the tie’s snaked off to wherever the horrid things live when they’re not throttling their victims.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In this line of work, too much paranoia can be worse than too little.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They’re nuts. Completely insane! I don’t get this gambling thing. Didn’t these people study statistics at university? Evidently not...”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My stomach flip-flops. No electronics? That’s heavy. In fact it’s more than heavy: to compute is to be, and all that. I don’t mind going without clothes, but being without a microprocessor is truly stripping down. It’s like asking a sorcerer to surrender his magic wand, or a politician to forswear his lies.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nobody taught me how to say no when a beautiful naked woman begs me to take my clothes off.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yup, that pretty much confirms the diagnosis. This is the desk of a diseased mind, hugely ambitious, prone to taking insanely dangerous risks. He’s not ashamed of boasting about it—he clearly believes in better alpha-primate dominance displays through carpentry.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He gestures at a skeletal contraption of chromed steel and thin, black leather that only Le Corbusier could have mistaken for a chair: “Have a seat.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He stabs at the mouse mat with one finger and I wince. But instead of fat purple sparks and a hideous soul-sucking manifestation, it simply wakes up his Windows box. (Not that there’s much difference.)”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I stare longingly at the bare chunk of space on the desktop. There may be a keyboard stitched into the lining of my cummerbund, but without a machine to plug it into it’s about as much use as a chocolate hacksaw.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s top of the range.” She pats the other side of the rack, as if to make sure it’s still there: “This baby’s got sixteen embedded blade servers from HP running the latest from Microsoft Federal Systems division and supporting a TLA Enterprise Non-Stop Transactional Intelligence™ middle-ware cluster‡ connected to the corporate extranet via a leased Intelsat pipe.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The dirty little secret of the intelligence-gathering job is that information doesn’t just want to be free—it wants to hang out on street corners wearing gang colors and terrorizing the neighbors.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Watch out for any signs—anything, however small—that suggests Billington isn’t in the driving seat, if you follow my drift. Got that?” Mo stares at him. “You think he’s possessed?” “I didn’t say that.” Alan shakes his head. “Once you start asking which captains of industry are being controlled by alien soul-sucking monsters from another dimension, why, anything might happen.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s a classic case of misplaced accounting priorities, valuing depreciable capital assets a thousand times more highly than the fruits of actual labor—but that’s the nature of the government organization.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why are you trying to shoot that cat?” ”Because—” I squeeze off another shot “—it’s possessed!”... Mo turns and looks at me harshly. “That looked just like a perfectly ordinary cat to me. If you’ve—” “It was possessed by the animation nexus behind JENNIFER MORGUE Two!” I gabble. “The clue—he saw a laser dot and dodged—”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I head off to the conference room for the Ways and Means Committee meeting—to investigate new ways of being mean, as Bridget (may Nyarlathotep rest her soul) once it explained it to me.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The literary James Bond is a creation of prewar London club-land: upper-crust, snobbish, manipulative and cruel in his relationships with women, with a thinly veiled sadomasochistic streak and a coldly ruthless attitude to his opponents that verges on the psychopathic.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty may be skin-deep, but horror goes all the way down to the desiccated bone beneath.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a sane employee in possession of his wits must be in want of a good manager.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unfortunately it’s also true to say that good management is a bit like oxygen—it’s invisible and you don’t notice its presence until it’s gone, and then you’re sorry.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People tend to underestimate him on first acquaintance. It’s a mistake they only make once. Whether or not they survive.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Here, take this. How about a toast? Confusion to the enemy!” I raise my glass. “What enemy?” He shrugs: “IT, Human Resources, the grim march of time—whoever you want, really.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She’s half-past overdrawn at the bank of life.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our trains are not ambushed by dragons, suicide bombers, or chthonian tentacle monsters. Frankly, given the quality of the postprandial conversation, this is not a net positive.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The trouble is, you can ignore history—but history won’t necessarily ignore you.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But who cares? That is, indeed, the big-ticket question.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let’s just say that you can’t always trust the historical record and move swiftly on.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source