Quotes from Charles Stross

I've suffered for what I know, so I'm not going to let you off the hook with a simple one-liner. I think you deserve a detailed explanation.

And he's maneuvered Old George into a position where the only way to safety lies through the New Annex. Things are about to get very messy indeed, for blood-on-the-walls values of messy.

To boldly go where no uploaded metahuman colony has gone before

her Jonquil overlay

when it isn't spending half its energy scanning for viruses or painting a pretty drop-shadow under the mouse pointer it runs like greased whippet shit.

The rich smell of life uneaten.

Desks are to executives what souped-up Mitsubishi Colts with low-profile alloys, metal-flake paint jobs, and extra-loud, chrome-plated exhaust pipes are to chavs; they're a big swinging dick, the proxy they use to proclaim their sense of self-importance. If you want to understand an executive, you study his desk.

Hopefully we don't end up as someone else's dinner." For a moment I feel a stab of remorse for the lamb: born into an infinite, hostile universe and destined from birth to be nothing more than fodder for uncaring alien intelligences vaster by far than it can comprehend. "'Scuse me, I'm having a Heather Mills moment here." Mo

Then the red light comes on above the camera, and I'm live on a Monday evening special crisis edition of Newsnight.

Our worshipers have met this British agent before. Do not attempt to convert him; bring him alive before Us. He will be of great service in the end times ahead.*** Schiller

Apocalypses are easier slept through than experienced.

and she has yet to see any eunuchs or freemartins at all

Compliance with the mile-high stack of social expectations you grow up with as a girl turns out to be mandatory if you want to get ahead in business. Be blonde, be skinny, and don't forget to smile, bitch.

After all, if there is one person a fanatic is predisposed to hate, it's a moderate who is almost but not completely aligned with their program.

Moral of story: if you are a flesh-eating monster, do not let the chattering monkey insert a bang-stick in your mouth while you're trying to snack down on its brains. Seriously, no good will come of this.

Lockhart glares at him furiously. "Sitrep, then get out." "What was that—" Pete begins, his words already in motion before he processes Lockhart's reaction. "That was the last we'll hear from a very brave woman. Or a very stupid one. Damn.

messing around with the structure of space-time in order to find a way around the Beckenstein bound.

some theories about the Casimir effect and pair production and spinning beakers of helium-3

People." I pause for a moment. "Remind me of Peel's Principles of Policing, again?" Ramona looks blank. Mhari looks skeptical. "Policing by consent," I hint. "Come on, the basic rules we play by? Minimum use of force to achieve compliance, the performance of a police force is judged best by how little crime takes place on their watch rather than by how many heads they kick in, that kind of thing?

Neither of them noticed the pair of polka-dotted knickers hiding behind the ventilation duct overhead, listening patiently and recording everything.

History is a foreign country, and the old are unwilling emigrants, tired out by the constant travel.

You have imposter syndrome," He says, "but paradoxically, that's often a sign of competence. Only people who understand their work well enough to be intimidated by it can be terrified by their own ignorance. It's the opposite of Dunning-Kruger syndrome, where the miserably incompetent think they're on top of the job because they don't understand it.

Amy Sullivan, age twenty-seven, assistant Human Resources manager at FlavrsMart Branch 322, Chickentown

It felt like going commando in a miniskirt on a Saturday night in town, even after Jim sent an email to ensure that there'd be a shiny new Samsung waiting for me in DC. Not knowing I could check my team's timesheets on my phone at 3 a.m. felt profoundly wrong.