I killed little Esmerelda because I felt I owed it to myself and to the world in general. I had, after all, accounted for two male children and thus done womankind something of a statistical...

I sucked that smoke in and made it part of me, joined mystically with the universe right at that point, said Yes to drugs forever just by the unique hit I got from that one...

You need to read more science fiction. Nobody who reads science fiction comes out with this crap about the end of history

I switched the light out again. The room was totally dark, not even the starlight showing while my eyes adjusted. Perhaps I would ask for one of those LED alarm radios, though I’m very fond...

There’s something very… I don’t know; primitive, perhaps, about you, Gurgeh. You’ve never changed sex, have you?’ He shook his head. ‘Or slept with a man?’ Another shake. ‘I thought so,’ Yay said. ‘You’re strange,...

To want more was not just childish, but cowardly, and somehow constpatory too. Death was change; it led to new chances, new vacancies, new niches and opportunities; it was not all loss.

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...

Half the fun of writing a novel is finding out from other people later on what you actually meant.

You know, when I was in Paris, seeing Linter for the first time, I was standing at the top of some steps in the courtyard where Linter’s place was, and I looked across it and...

I don’t think you really belong here, Aviger.” Xoxarle nodded wisely, slowly.Aviger shrugged, and did not raise his eyes. “I don’t think any of us do.””The brave belong where they decide.” Some harshness entered the...

Everything about us, everything around us, everything we know and can know of is composed ultimately of patterns of nothing; that’s the bottom line, the final truth. So where we find we have any control...

Maybe he’s up to something, maybe he’ś not really crazy after all. Perhaps he just got fed up acting normal and decided to act crazy instead, and they locked him up because he went too...

Hey, Wrobik; cheer up, yeah? You’re going to shoot down a fucking starship. It’ll be an experience.

Why had he done it? Why couldn’t it just not have happened? Why didn’t they have time-travel, why couldn’t he go back and stop it happening? Ships that could circumnavigate the galaxy in a few...

Don’t you have a religion?” Dorolow asked Horza.”Yes,” he replied, not taking his eyes away from the screen on the wall above the end of the main mess-room table. “My survival.””So… your religion dies with...

Just before the Clear Air Turbulence went back into warp and its crew sat down at the table, the ship expelled the limp corpse of Zallin. Where it had found a live man in a...

The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness,...

All I said was that I thought it was a judgement from God that Blyth had first lost his leg and then had the replacement become the instrument of his downfall. All because of the...

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...

There are no gods, we are told, so I must make my own salvation.

Oh, no, Cameron; I believe we’re born free of sin and free of guilt. It’s just that we all catch it, eventually. There are no clean rooms for morality, Cameron, no boys in bubbles kept...

…and I confess that, like a child, I cry. Ah, self-pity; I think we are at our most honest and sincere when we feel sorry for ourselves.

One of your American professors said that to study religion was merely to know the mind of man, but if one truly wanted to know the mind of God, you must study physics.

It’s like a sealed, forgotten chamber in me; I shan’t feel complete until I’ve discovered its entrance.’ ‘Sounds like a tomb. Aren’t you afraid of what you’ll find in there?’ ‘It’s a library; only the...

I think the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Fooling ourselves may even be a necessary precondition for fooling others.

The flames had passed over those flattened blades and consumed their heather neighbours on either side while they themselves had remained, made proof against the blaze and guaranteed their stark survival just by their earlier...

There has seldom if ever a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression...

Look on the happy side, think of the good things. Hadn’t it been clever? Yes, it had.

Bright morning comes; the bloody-fingered dawn with zealous light sets seas of air ablaze and bends to earth another false beginning. My eyes open like cornflowers, stick, crusted with their own stale dew, then take...

Escape is a consumer goods like another

We got talking about how some people were selfish and some weren’t, and the difference between right-wing people and left-wing people. You said it all came down to imagination. Conversative people don’t usually have very...

there is both fear and comfort to be drawn from devils–the fear speaks for itself, the comfort comes from being able to absolve oneself of responsibility for one’s actions.

Och, stop being so sensitive, Prentice; it isn’t much fun getting old. One of the few pleasures that do come your way is to speak your mind… Certainly annoying your relatives is enjoyable too, but...

Yes of course I know it’s all a dream. Isn’t everything?

I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk.

In the end, he had to admit, he didn’t really understand her. He didn’t understand women. He didn’t understand men. He didn’t even understand children very well. All he really understood, he thought, was himself...

…for all its apparent speed, the ship was almost perfectly silent, and he experienced an enervating, eerie feeling, as though the ancient warship, mothballed all those centuries, had somehow not yet fully woken up, and...