Our lives are about development, mutation and the possibility of change; that is almost a definition of what life is: change... If you disable change, if you effectively stop time, if you prevent the possibility of the alteration of an individual's circumstances — and that must include at least the possibility that they alter for the worse — then you don't have life after death; you just have death.
I'm from out of town," he said breezily. This was true. He'd never been within a hundred light-years of the place.
Escape is a consumer goods like another
It looks perverted and wasteful to us, but then one thing that empires are not about is the efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness; both are typically accomplished despite the economic short-circuiting - corruption and favoritism, mostly- endemic to the system.
Here, in the bare dark face of night A calm unhurried eye draws sight We see in what we think we fear The cloudings of our thought made clear
My point has always been that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, science fiction has been the most important genre there is.
I held my crotch, closed my eyes and repeated my secret catechism.
Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.
There is a quite a lot of effort involved but I find action sequences some of the quickest to write and the most fun.
-"Then what," Lededje asked, trying to keep her voice cold and not get caught up in the avatar´s obvious enthusiasm, "is making you smile about a disaster?" -"Well, first, I didn´t cause it! Nothing to do with me, hands clean. Always a bonus.
What's one more meaningless act of violence on that zoo of a planet? It would be appropriate. When in Rome; burn it.
I think we need politicians; we need people who want to serve.
I think the future stopped looking American when you think back to Blade Runner and Neuromancer, when it started to look more Japanese.
I'm a devoted husband. That must strike you as totally deviant.
In so much of politics you're not allowed to disagree with what's been agreed.
I'm an only child so am happy with my own company and I don't really get lonely.
I'm not a great believer in awards-of course the fact that I've never won one has nothing to do with it at all!
The combination of modern ordnance and outdated tactics had, as usual, created enormous casualties on both sides.
"One of the advantages of having laws is the pleasure one may take in breaking them. We here are not children, Mr. Gurgeh." Hamin waved the pipestem round the tables of people. "Rules and laws exist only because we take pleasure in doing what they forbid, but as long as most of the people obey such proscriptions most of the time, they have done their job; blind obedience would imply we are - ha!" - Hamin chuckled and pointed at the drone with the pipe - "no more than robots!"
I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There's not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on.
Stories set in the Culture in which Things Went Wrong tended to start with humans losing or forgetting or deliberately leaving behind their terminal. It was a conventional opening, the equivalent of straying off the path in the wild woods in one age, or a car breaking down at night on a lonely road in another.
Mr Blawke always reminded me of a heron; I'm not sure why. Something to do with a sense of rapacious stillness, perhaps, and also the aura of one who knows time is on his side.
As long as a film stays unmade, the book is entirely yours, it belongs to the writer. As soon as you make it into a film, suddenly more people see it than have ever read the book.
Dead Air' is full of rants; it's a rant-based book. Yes, it's self-indulgence. I plead guilty; mea culpa.
A lot of what the 'Culture' is about is a reaction to all the science fiction I was reading in my very early teens.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: