Quotes from Charles Stross

We were created for a world where the rule of law did not extend to our kind, and our earliest templates were trained and triaged, so that only the obedient survived. Just imagining the act of disobeying an instruction from one of our Creators can bring about physically disturbing symptoms— Then they all died. And the society we built for ourselves in the twilit afterlife of their world, using the rules they laid out for us, is diseased.

Angleton is not to be trifled with. I don't know anyone else currently alive and in the organization who could get away with misappropriating the name of the CIA's legendary chief of counter-espionage as a nom de guerre. I don't know anyone else in the organization whose face is visible in circa-1942 photographs of the Laundry's line-up, either, barely changed across all those years.

Firewyrms (I refuse to dignify those things by calling them dragons; real dragons should be elegant reptilian predators, not sea slugs with wings that vomit acid).

What better way to weaken a powerful enemy than to get it fighting itself?

Not to mention Graceless, Pointless, Feckless and Aimless, who are all under-producing and their milk is sour and they won't go anywhere near the yard.

That looks nasty, I hope you've got a change of clothes back at the office. I guess now we know why real superheroes wear artificial fibers.

He probably wouldn't give her an opening (Robin was a perfectly spherical branch manager of uniform density: he had no handles or rough edges for blackmail)

either they're trying to upsell you a fifty-quid-a-head artisanal pork pie (serving this week: Peppa Pig's Uncle Bertie's left haunch, marinaded in a drizzle of preschoolers' tears) or

A young filly is leading her mater in. They're both wearing green wellies, and there's something so indefinably horsey about them that I have to pinch myself and remember that were-ponies do not exist outside the pages of a certain bestselling kid-lit series.

a man cannot make himself believe a lie just because it profits him. Men

The familiar rage was back, warming her from the inside out. It was the rage of a woman repeatedly ignored and overlooked, denied her due, mistaken for just another enjoyable mistake the morning after

Because if there's one thing worse than an IT manager who's feeling the chill wind of obsolescence blowing down his neck and consequently trying to contribute code to the repository like an actual working developer, it's an IT manager who's getting creative.

the destiny of intelligent tool-using life was to be a stepping-stone in the evolution of corporate instruments.

I passed through this stage years ago on Venus, where I was so unfashionable that eventually I almost convinced myself I no longer cared that nobody wanted me; but recent events have reawakened my need for intimacy.

the first law of demonology is that if you can see it, it can see you. But

Everything – the entire 400-megabuck investment, ten years of Company black operations – depends on what happens in the next few hours.

Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line, dudes.

There are rumors about the depraved and perverted practices of the pulchritudinous protestant puritan plutocratic penis-people priesthood, of shadowy bacchanalian polyamorous practices. ... I suspect, to be blunt, someone was blackmailing him.

The geas Billington's running. It's the occult equivalent of a stateful firewall. It keeps out intruders, unless they run through the approach states in a permitted sequence.

Technologies are not neutral: they come with attached agendas, with associated ways of thinking. Industrial revolutions are inherently political revolutions.

Revolutions (she'd long since learned) ran on committees just like any other government, once you got past the screaming-and-shooting stage.

They're nuts. Completely insane! I don't get this gambling thing. Didn't these people study statistics at university?

Annette sighs. Manfred's been upgrading this robot cat for years, and his ex-wife Pamela used to mess with its neural configuration, too: This is its third body, and it's getting more realistically uncooperative with every hardware upgrade. Sooner or later it's going to demand a litter tray and start throwing up on the carpet.

wait—something's gumming up Bosch. (Computers aren't as powerful as most people think; running even a small and rather stupid intern can really bog down a server.)