Quotes from Walter Jon Williams

All around her was death and ruin, to which she had not been a participant but an angry witness. In a way, that was worse than dying. Even annihilation had been denied her.

Porn mainlined to the forebrain, electric orgasms courtesy of induction, screaming synthetic highs circuited to the mind, technicolor power fantasies jabbed right into one's primal need.

It is no longer enough to be the best. Somehow, as well, it matters to be wise. To know on whose behalf he wields the sword.

It's the same as the city, Sarah knows, the same hierarchy of power, beginning with the blocs in the orbits and ending with people who might as well be the fieldmice in front of the blades of the harvester, pointless, countless lives in the path of a structure that can't be stopped. She feels the anger coiling around her like armor. The chance to rest, she thinks, was nice enough while it lasted. But right now another fragment of time must be survived.

Sarah, her mind strobing colors, reaches blindly into her pocket, finds her inhaler, triggers it once up each nostril. Her nerves burn with electric light.

Where does the shaped charge go when it has done its task? It flies apart, needles of steel each pursuing its own end. Scrap, seeking oblivion.

There is only the single imperative, Survive this Moment. The past scarcely matters; the future will be dealt with, instant by instant, as it arrives. Each tick of the clock, a new burden, a new application of the imperative.

To be honest, I don't think so. I think what's made me better is success and money. Lack of success made me desperate and crazy. All the bad things I've done in my life came out of that desperation.

Ivan's going to die...that's why we follow him...We always follow the doomed ones. The ones who show us the way. The world will follow, no matter what. We just want them to accept that. Go with a little dignity, a little forethought.

Great. An asthmatic goon.

Thunder explodes over their heads and Sarah sees the silver sheet of water pouring down outside the broken barn door, Cowboy slumped against the wall with a rueful smile, the buttons in his head reflecting the lightning in blue-white pattern, silver and turquoise, like eyes gazing inward, into his head. Sarah feels a sweep of sadness for Cowboy, the dispossessed panzerboy, his boots leaving tracks in the dust above which he once flew with his mind flicking at the speed of light.

Lucky Cowboy and his clean hands. By chance you had a talent somebody wanted, and now you're able to afford principles. Good for you.

The evil god wants to force humanity into the path he's chosen.  But if I was certain of the best path—" and here he smiled,  "—I wouldn't force anyone.  That would be a waste of energy.  I'd merely try to make the thing inevitable.

Sarah's lips curl..."That's not my kind of action." Still, there is a trace of hesitation in her voice, as if she's bidding farewell to a cherished dream, having found its price.

People religious enough to want to live in a world dominated by faith were also religious enough to guard their souls against doctrinal error, which logically meant suppressing, persecuting, or killing those who might corrupt even minor details of doctrine. 

Two large, soft traveling bags weighed down his shoulders by their straps. Holo adverts blossomed into life around him. He walked lightly, scanning the people waiting for the shuttle. Food smells came out of the fast eateries across from the gate. The air hummed with the noise of business.

marriage is about money and property and inheritance? Why else bother with it?

These were mixed with parts that, when assembled, transformed themselves into a custom-made long-barreled pistol, made entirely of an advanced plastic that would pass most detectors and which fired recoilless, near-silent cartridges with self-consuming casings, He'd brought the ammunition himself on the Earth shuttle.

After a few generations of warfare, though, the fanatics were either killed along with their backups, or were persuaded to modify their positions.  Most of the religious pockets had evolved into low-density lands devoted to agriculture, abundance, popular piety, and toleration. 

They're up here, and they're lost. Once their obedience to Earth gave them meaning, and then their struggle against it, but now they don't know what to do. They're too distracted by their structures. They got their independence, but they don't know what it means, and they're looking for the things that will give it meaning.

We weren't running the Line, Cowboy thinks, for the Northeast. Or for the money. That was what Arkady and the thirdmen never understood, always thinking we could be bought, that we would respond to economic pressure. And that's what the Orbitals don't understand, what their crystal world models can't figure. That we'd have run the Alley for nothing. Because it was a way to be free.

Propelled by violas and stinging electric guitar, presto followed andante, and so to finale.

When the work was done Gabriel would compose music for the bone trumpet, a lament for Vissarion played on an instrument made from Vissarion's femur. Vissarion would be pleased, he thought, that his remains had become music, leaping into life like Athene from the thigh of Zeus.

power becomes a slave to passion so easily, and to an unacknowledged passion easiest of all.