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Michael Swanwick
115 quotes
“The oracle-glass was maddeningly literal, capable of answering only the question one asked, rather than that which one wanted answered.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They’re just kids,” Will said scornfully. “Do not despise them because they are young. The young make excellent soldiers and better martyrs. They are easily dominated, quickly trained, and as ruthless as you command them to be. They kill without regret, and they go to their deaths readily, because they do not truly understand that death is permanent.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I have to play your stupid games, at least I don’t have to pretend to enjoy them.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sam stood in the center of the church, listening for the presence of God. It was a hot place. The air was blue with floating radioisotopes. She glanced up at the clouds and they staggered by as if the walls were falling in on her. She looked away quickly. The air flowed around her, calm and peaceful and blue. But there was no divine presence.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These hands were almost crippled digging coal so that rich men in Boston might grow even richer.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What you propose to do today is to bring civilization to a lawless corner of the world. I know that you claim more modest ambitions. But when the protection of law is extended to the innocent and weak, that is civilization. Now I hold that in the natural state, there are only two kinds of people in the world—the men with guns, and the victims. And the one kind feeds off the other.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m a politician. I agree with the majority of whoever I happen to be with at the moment.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People will believe in just about any kind of superstitious crap nowadays.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your girlfriend is none too tightly wrapped, if you’ll forgive me for saying so. I don’t think she’s actually crazy, but—I been watching her a long time, and it is my considered opinion that she is none too clear on where the line between fantasy and reality should be drawn.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The secret of a good scam is not to get greedy.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Machines!” Wyeth snorted. “Machines are the easiest things in the universe to outwit because they’re predictable—that’s their function, to be predictable, to do exactly what they’re designed for, time after time.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’ll have to throw it at him, Rebel thought. Swing it up, catch him under the jaw, break a few teeth. Then grab the knife and hold him for the security people. That was a good plan. It ranked right up there with suddenly learning how to teleport.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was the kind of discovery that shatters old universes and opens up new ones in their place.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We had ambition, and ascended into Hell.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would appreciate it if just this once you would make the effort to curb your negativism.” “I have to say what I think. That’s what I’m being paid for, after all.” “A very common delusion.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The bureaucrat was sensitive to this kind of friction. It arose wherever the moving edge of technology control touched on local pride.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tyranny always has its rationale.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Money can always be traced. It leaves a trail of slime behind it wherever it goes.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am playing a game called Futility,” she said. Are you familiar with it? “How does one win?” “You don’t. You can only postpone losing. I’ve managed to keep this particular game going for years.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was a scream straight from the toad buried at the base of the brain, that ancient reptile that wants everything at once, delivered to its feet and set ablaze.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Time was a flickering gray fire constantly consuming all things, so that what appeared to be motion was actually the oxidation and reduction of possibilities, the collapse of potential matter from grace to nothingness.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I trust I have not grown so gullible as to consult a doctor,” the bureaucrat said with dignity. “If I want medical attention, I hall employ the qualified machinery or, in extremis, a human with proper biomedical augmentation. But I will not swill down fermented swamp guzzle at the behest of some quasi-literate, uneducated charlatan.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Did you experience hallucinations or illusions?” “What’s the difference?” “An illusion is a misreading of actual sensory data, while a hallucination is seeing something that isn’t there.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A magician does not send messages, you know—he orchestrates reality.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Indeed, what is magic but impossible science?”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You don’t hide information by destroying it. You hide it by swamping it with bad information.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A tension went out of the air. Their business here was over then, and they all knew it; the magic moment had arrived when it was understood that nothing more would be established, discovered, or decided today. But the meeting, having once begun, must drag on for several long more hours before it could be ended. The engines of protocol had enormous inertial mass; once set in motion they took forever to grind to a stop.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The announcers sounded giddily excited. Their faces flushed, their eyes bright. Natural disasters did that to people, made them feel significant, reassured them that their actions mattered.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Be grateful. I’ve taught you a valuable lesson. Most people never do learn exactly how much they will do to stay alive.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You will study bioscience control, that ought to be useful—it will teach you the folly of thinking you can go against your genetic inheritance, for one thing.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everyone dies—the rearrangement of when is a matter of only statistical interest.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So whose side are you on? You have to choose.” “I’m not going to be on anybody’s side anymore,” she said. “Sides are stupid.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The intent of the Goddess is neither known nor knowable. She makes us dance, male and female, in ever-converging gyres that bring us ultimately each to our own destiny, and that destiny is always the same and never escapable. She does not tell us why.” “You said there were no outside forces ordering our lives. That there was nothing but chance and random occurrence.” He shrugged. “You did!” “The Goddess is unknowable and her aims unfathomable, unpredictable, and ineluctable. They might as well be random. We live our brief lives in ignorance and then we die. That’s all.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For all that she’d had no great expectations for it, sex was turning out to be even more squalid, tawdry, and cynical than she had suspected it would.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hierarchies only work to the benefit of those on the top. If you’re high, you’ll get by. If you’re low, out you go! That’s how it is.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can’t figure you out.” “You’re not supposed to.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The secret to successful scrying was to realize that the future was not fixed and there was no way of predicting it. None. All one could do was to identify what already existed unacknowledged. Lovers pledged themselves to each other long before their first kiss. Murder was implicit in friendship. A carcinoma that looked like a speck of dust on the X-ray spelled death. So much of what appeared to be random event was simply the working out of consequences.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Meanwhile, the Wheel turns. The humble are exalted and the mighty are humbled. The best are inevitably defeated, and the scum always rises to the top. Here is the source of all the world’s pain, that restless turning, ever accelerating, always bringing us around again to where we were before, but older, changed, scarred, and sorrowful. Had I only known the identity of the whisperer, I would never have listened. The Wheel would not have been set in motion.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What was all that about?” “It’s an occupational hazard...You start by reading books, and you end by loving them.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your collection is not a woman. That’s only a metaphor—an abstraction! You’ll be dying for nothing, for a principle that nobody else can even comprehend.” As she spoke, Jane became convinced that she herself would never willingly die for a principle. She might feel guilty about it, but she’d smile and lie, knuckle under, pretend, anything, in order to survive. It made her feel a little sad to realize this, but also, at the same time, very adult.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, Sirin, how could you? You know as well as I do how dangerous scrying the future can be. Half the time what it shows you wouldn’t happen if you hadn’t foreseen it.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her life was a complete mess, true, but it could be straightened out. All it would take was money. Money could straighten out anything, if you had enough of it.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I want your help to destroy the universe.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Look,” Jane said. “Exactly what must I say to get rid of you?”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Incolore sighed. “The loyalty of the systematically betrayed. Is there anything sadder?”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are you ready?” Jane asked. “Before I existed, I was ready.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We’ll be taking out the front gate and the Time Clock, and blasting the Goddess Stone to gravel.” She felt wild, free, vengeful, obscene—unstoppable. “Serving the Bitch notice.” She knew that there was no Goddess, save as a metaphor for what was otherwise inconceivable, that the forces they were going up against were as impersonal as they were vast. But it felt more satisfying this way.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There’s no future for me. All my life I’ve been stuck in a rigged game. The dice are loaded and I was declared a loser before I even began to play. These are not just words! What choice was I ever given? Only this one, right here, right now. I can swallow defeat meekly or I can throw the board up in the air and smash all the pieces. Well, I’ve been screwed from Day One—I have no intention whatsoever of being a good sport!”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The universe has backed you into another corner—you can kill or die. There are no other choices. Doesn’t that make you angry? Doesn’t it make you want revenge? Or are you going to truckle to Dame Fate one more time, to be crushed and for all I know resurrected to run the maze of torment again and yet again? Stand up on your hind legs for once!”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For a long time the Baldwynn did not speak. At last he said, “Will you serve the Goddess now? Knowingly and lovingly, in sweet obedience and humble acknowledgment of all that she is?” “No.” The word was a pebble in her mouth. She spat it out. “Not now, not tomorrow, not if I live to be a million. Never.” The Baldwynn stopped and took her hands in his. “Dear child,” he said. “I feared there was no hope for you.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source