Quotes from Charles Stross

The most efficient kind of censorship isn't the heavy-handed black inking of the secret policeman; it's the self-censorship we impose on ourselves when we're afraid that if we say what we think everyone around us will think us strange.

Death is really no more than the voluntary liquidation of an economy of microscopic free agents, the redemption of the debt of structured life.

Collaring neds for breaking and entering is one thing, managing the gay community outreach program and training constables is another, but international cybercrime in a nuclear bunker under Drum Brae is right off the map.

one of the quirkier cognitive disorders to which software project management is prone.

So once again Janice proves that not only is she a nerd, she's a useful nerd who gets to stay on the team.

Anyway, you don't have to be terribly intelligent to complete a PhD," Karim grumps. "You just need to be stupidly persistent. If anything, being too smart gets in the way—

the stacks keeps you on your toes. Besides which, there are rumours of ape-men living down here; I don't know how the rumours got started, but this place is more than somewhat creepy when you're on your own late at night.

Yes, Bob, I rather thought entity-relationship diagrams were your sort of thing. You're the expert in Visio, aren't you? Drawing up UML diagrams of fictional vampire brood hierarchies should keep you out of trouble for a while.

It's amazing how much work you can get done in three days if you hold a blowtorch to each end of the candle.

Rich, powerful, white alpha males who dress up in gimp suits and beat up ethnically diverse lower-class criminals.

But you're more at home with SQL than socialization: Innuendo wasn't a language they taught in CS lab.

They fuck hard and fast at too many gees, his docking hectocotylus locked tight inside her launch adapter.

What band does the necromancer dance to? Boney M.)

before the hardcore idiots began cooking up bombs and declaring war on the System, a System that had ultimately gotten tired of their posturing and rolled over in its sleep, obliterating them.

Of course, to have admitted that you hated football while you were working on STEAMING would have been a bit like one of the US president's staffers confessing to thinking religion was overrated, abstinence didn't work, and what the country really needed was a short sharp dose of communism with a side order of Islamic extremism to go.

And because this is now a political problem, the usual political syllogism applies: (a) is a problem: Something Must Be Done, (b) is Something, Therefore (b) Must Be Done.

Down in the park with a friend called Five.

You want to know what it's like to emigrate to Saturn system? Imagine spending six years in a straitjacket tied to the outside of a skyscraper, with only a couple dozen similar lunatics for company.

History is written by the survivors, a narrative they compose to explain events to themselves. So the historicity of journals like this one—their accuracy and authenticity—is a function of the reliability of the narrator

The PM smiles, and for a moment I see a flickering vision where His face should be: an onion-skin Matryoshka doll of circular shark-toothed maws, lizard-man faces, and insectile hunger. "A word in my study if you don't mind. Right this way.

Somewhere in the Acceleration, colorless green ideas adrift in furious sleep remember a tiny starship launched years ago, and pay attention.

fewer and fewer of our progenitors were replicating themselves via the weird, squishy process to which they devoted their organs of entertainment.

Everything he's learned about the Civil Service tells him that having tea poured for you is one of the ferociously guarded signifiers of rank, like the grade of paintings from the Government Art Collection hung on your office wall, or the quality of your carpet.

Because it's a thing of beauty, the ability to spin the cloth of reality, and you're a sucker for it: Isn't story-telling what being human is all about?