Quotes from Charles Stross

when you stare into the void, the void stares also; but if you cast into the void, you get a type conversion error.

Sorry, I should have warned you." Apologies are the keystone of an enduring relationship. Failing to apologize for mistakes, or getting onto a treadmill of belittling insults, is a bad warning sign. So far we've avoided it, but . 

It's like the joke about the post-modernist gangster who makes you an offer ye canna understand.

Ras is a big fan of Noam Chomsky; calling it the Propaganda Ministry keeps things honest, he says. Like having a Ministry of War rather than a Department of Defense, or Counting Other People's Murdered Children instead of talking about Collateral Damage.

when you're sentenced to drive a Smart car on a road where everything else has a speed best described by its mach number, you tend to pay attention.

The idiot child they've placed on the throne does not impress with his acumen.

Did you not swap out your magazine for banishment rounds?" she scolded, hands on hips. The guard looked sheepish. "But you said they was expen—" "There is expensive and then there is needlessly paying for your funeral," Eve snapped. An immediate ratchet and clatter of magazines being ejected and replaced signalled that the message had gotten across.

Being management means having to hold your hands behind your back while your inexperienced junior staff crap all over a job you could have done in five seconds—and then taking their mess right on the chin.

It's not just the music. When we develop a working AI or upload minds, we'll need a way of defending it against legal threats. That's what Gianni pointed out to me . . .

Non-euclidian sofa

You said a bad word!" Lyssa hammed it up, eyes wide and limpid, and cranked her tear ducts all the way from Flood Danger: Raise the Thames Barrier to Critical Emergency: Three Gorges Spillway Eroding.

making possible huge economies of scale in the application of force majeure. (Subjects whose mind-bogglingly vast numbers beggar Agent First's imagination: it makes no sense, who needs that many slaves?)

Did it have a name, this project?" "Yes. The books and posters are called MAGIC CIRCLE OF SAFETY, but she said I'd find it in the stacks under a very strange reference—KGB.2.YA—what's so funny? Bob? Are you choking? Bob? Bob? Do you need help?" Kiss Good-Bye 2 Your Ass: I love the Laundry sense of humor.

Any artificial entity that's willing to upload its neural state vector into a one-kilogram interstellar probe three-quarters of the way to Alpha Centauri without backup or some clear way of returning home has got to be more than a few methods short in the object factory.

and the brain-dead music industry copyright nazis are campaigning for a law to make it mandatory to install secret government spookware in every Walkman—or camera—to prevent home taping from killing Michael Jackson. Absolutely brilliant.

She could ace the North Circular in a jacked Toyota Tercel faster than Sabine Schmitz could lap the Nürburgring in a Transit van, and the only times the plod had got on her tail she'd left them, well, plodding.

I gather Andy is still in full-on Office Flying Dutchman mode . . .)

Idealism couldn't coexist with so many other people's ideals, betrayed in their execution by the tools they'd chosen.

Yes, well, if it's any consolation that goes for me, too, and for Angleton believe it or not, but 'upset' and fifty pence will buy you a cup of coffee and what we really need is to finger the means, motive, and murderer of Daisy the Cow in time to close the stable door.

the fool's errand to the edge of the Beckenstein limit again

So Ah'm no evil, Ah'm just plain bad.

In a sufficiently large crisis, sane and measured responses go out the window.

The official Government Random Number Generator used for seeding new encryption keys is a thing of legend, running as it does on a type of punched paper tape that hasn't been manufactured since the 1950s. (We had to invent some really neat hacks using digital cameras to read it into our oldest trailing-edge minicomputers in order to use those numbers . . .)

Dear God," whispers Pete, "it's full of posters!