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China Miéville
143 quotes
“Sweet smoke wafted over the crowd: khepri, mostly, but here and there other races, investigating the statues. They filled the square: fifteen-foot figures of animals and plants and monstrous creatures, some real and some that had never lived, fashioned in brightly coloured khepri-spit. They represented hours and hours of communal labour. [...] To Lin the statues represented dedication and community, and bankrupt imaginations falling back on cod-heroic grandiosity. This was why she lived and ate and spat her art alone.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She was an outsider. Had left her sisters. Forgotten hive and moiety.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was no chance at all he would see her, in that labyrinth of dubious experiments, where the nature of the research made even the architecture untrustworthy.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Isaac was still piqued by the ignorance surrounding watercraeft. It brought home to him, again, how much mainstream science was bunk, how much "analysis" was just, description-often bad description-hiding behind obfuscatory rubbish.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She was intelligent enough to realize that her excitement was childish, but not mature enough to care.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is what makes the world, Ms. Lin. I believe this to be the fundamental dynamic. Transition. The point where one thing becomes another. It is what makes you, the city, the world, what they are. And that is the theme I’m interested in. The zone where the disparate become part of the whole. The hybrid zone.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I will ask you to work from life, to produce a model-life-size, I fancy-of me. Very few people see my face, Ms. Lin. A man in my position has to be careful. I’m sure you can understand. If you take this commission I will make you rich, but I will also own a part of your mind. The part that pertains to me. That is mine. I do not give you permission to share it with any. If you do, you will suffer greatly before you die.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The lamp was a beacon, a lighthouse in that forbidding city, steering the wyrman’s way over the river and out of the predatory night.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In this city, those who look like me are not like me. I made the mistake once (tired and afraid and desperate for help) of doubting that. Looking for a place to hide, looking for food and warmth at night and respite from the stares that greet me whenever I set foot on the streets.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have taken to foraging alone after nightfall when the city quiets and becomes introspective. I walk as an intruder on its solipsistic dream. I came by darkness, I live by darkness. The savage brightness of the desert is like some legend I heard a long time ago. My existence grows nocturnal. My beliefs change.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The winds of this city are a more melancholy breed. They explore like lost souls, looking in at dusty gaslit windows. We are brethren, the city-winds and I. We wander together.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have watched mutant creatures crawl from sewers into cold flat starlight and whisper shyly to each other, drawing maps and messages in faecal mud. I have sat with the wind at my side and seen cruel things, wicked things. My scars and bonestubs itch. I am forgetting the weight, the sweep, the motion of wings. If I were not garuda I would pray. But I will not obeise myself before arrogant spirits.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can’t respect other people’s individuality if you focus on your own individuality in a kind of abstract, isolated way. The point is that you are an individual inasmuch as you exist in a social matrix of others who respect your individuality and your right to make choices. That’s concrete individuality: an individuality that recognizes that it owes its existence to a kind of communal respect on the part of all the other individualities, and that it had better therefore respect them similarly.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An abstract individual is a garuda who forgot, for some time, that he or she is part of a larger unit, and owes respect to all the other choosing individuals.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Art’s something you choose to make … it’s a bringing together of … of everything around you into something that makes you more human, more khepri, whatever. More of a person.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Part of you understands without recourse to words, even if your higher mind asks questions in a format which renders an answer impossible." He looked at her triumphantly. "You too are the bastard-zone, Ms. Lin! Your art takes place where your understanding and your ignorance blur.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If a murderer stalked the mansions of Flag Hill or Canker Wedge, would the militia waste any time or spare resources? Why, no! The hunt for Jack Half-a-Prayer proves it! And yet, when the Eyespy Killer strikes in Smog Bend, nothing happens! Another eyeless victim was fished from the Tar last week-bringing the number killed to five-and not a word from the blue-clad bullies in the Spike. We say: it’s one law for the rich, another for the poor!”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We say: votes for all and vote for change!”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We say: towards an all-race union against the bosses!”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Smoke and grime built up in the air until the train seemed to ride on a smog tide. The sounds of industry increased. The train flew through clutches of vast, sparse chimneys like blasted trees as the train passed through Sunter.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tearfly looked at Bellis curiously, bewildered by her ignorance. She did not care. What was important to her was where she was fleeing from, not where she was, or where she was going.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m not waiting to die, I don’t believe I’ll die, I am waiting for something else. To arrive. To understand. To be at my destination.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She felt so alien, bowed under culture shock as crippling as migraine.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Neither dust nor light stirred. It was as if time had been bled dry and given up.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For every action, there’s an infinity of outcomes. Countless trillions are possible, many milliards are likely, millions might be considered probable, several occur as possibilities to us as observers—and one comes true.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We say what happens now. We’re taking control. We’re turning around; we’re heading home. Your orders to proceed...are in-fucking-validated.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She shouted, “Arms and tongues, Spiral?” and waggled her arms and stuck out her tongue, and the old man crowed and did the same. “He’s for the first, against the second, as I recall,” she said to Ori. “Has he chanted for you? ‘Too much yammer, not enough hammer.’”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The chief was a thuggish man: nervous, Cutter saw, because he knew he was a mediocrity become by kink of history a ruler.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Judah knows the trow will be eradicated and their homes lost to history, but he will not be party to it, and he has tried to stand in its way.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I want to know everything, he says.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the rich grow afraid, they get nasty. We say: A government for need not greed!”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ori supposed there were as many unspeakable stories as there were men come back from war.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“History...” Jacobs spoke with terse authority. Brought Ori to a hush. “Is all full. And dripping. With the corpses. Of them who trusted the incorruptible.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We’re all racing,” he said. “Yeah, but some of us in the wrong direction.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My dad hates umbrellas,” said Deeba, swinging her own. “When it rains he always says the same thing. ‘I do not believe the presence of moisture in the air is sufficient reason to overturn society’s usual sensible taboo against wielding spiked clubs at eye level.’”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Throw something away and you declare it obsolete.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are no cats in UnLondon, for example, because they’re not magic and mysterious at all, they’re idiots.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It had some allies. Believe me, there’s nothing so terrible that someone won’t support it.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Destiny’s bunk,” said the book. “That’s why this lot aren’t the Propheseers anymore.” “From here on in,” said Mortar, “we’re the Order of Suggesters.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no theology so desperate that you can’t find it.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She probably used proxies and a cleaner-upper online too, because there was bugger-all of interest in her cache.” “You have no idea what you’re saying, do you, boss?” “None at all. I had the techies write it all out phonetically for me.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is more foolish and childish to assume there is a conspiracy, or that there is not?”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He tried to grin but it did not go well.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Folklore was self-generating.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m asking you all to have faith. Don’t be afraid. ‘How could it have gone?’ people have asked me. ‘Why aren’t the gods doing anything?’ Remember two things. The gods don’t owe us anything. That’s not why we worship. We worship because they’re gods. This is their universe, not ours. What they choose they choose and it’s not ours to know why.” Christ, thought Billy, what a grim theology. It was a wonder they could keep anyone in the room, without the emotional quid pro quo of hope.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know, I know,” Moore said. “Mad beliefs like that, eh? Must be some metaphor, right? Must mean something else?” Shook his head. “What an awfully arrogant thing. What if faiths are exactly what they are? And mean exactly what they say?”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It should be illegal to be so much younger than me.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That was why this congregation protected him. He was not just another saint. Billy was the preserver. Giant-squid John the Baptist. The shyness he saw in the Krakenists was devotion. It was awe. “Oh for God’s sake,” he said. The men and women stared. He could see them attempting exegesis on his outburst.”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why wouldn’t the gods of the world be giant squid? What better beast? It wouldn’t take much to imagine those tentacles closing around the world, now would it?”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We want the same thing, you and me. If we can mess with them, everyone’s happy. Except them. Which is the point, right?”
China Miéville (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source