Quotes from Charles Stross

The chip that functions abnormally will be desoldered, as they say.

I shove my reading matter back into my messenger bag (it's a novel about a private magician for hire in Chicago—your taxpayer pounds at work) and go to stand in the doorway.

Georgina darts forward, grabs my hand, and pumps it up and down while peering at my face as if she's wondering why water isn't gushing from my mouth.

let slip the yapping chihuahuas of infowar

Twas the night before Christmas, the office was closed, The transom was shut, the staff home in repose; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, But St. Nicholas won't be coming because this is a Designated National Security Site within the meaning of Para 4.12 of Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act (Amended) and unauthorised intrusion on such a site is an arrestable offense ...

silly me, I wasn't expecting a stealth, supersonic, vertical take-off submarine fueled by the eerily whistling ghosts of necromantically murdered dolphins.

You've just spent an entire prehistoric human lifetime as an ice ghoul and people are needling you for having too many arms? I shake my head. I just assume you have a good reason.

AFTER WE DO THE WASHING-UP, I GET TO SPEND THE REST OF the evening reading FAQs on cat maintenance on the web. It takes about half an hour to come to the unwelcome realization that they're almost as complex as home-brew gaming PCs, and have even more failure modes. (When your gaming PC malfunctions it doesn't stealthily dump core in your shoes.)

We remain convinced that this is the best defensive posture to adopt in order to minimize casualties when the Great Old Ones return from beyond the stars to eat our brains.

He monologued at me. With PowerPoint.?? ??He what? And you're still sane? Obviously I underestimated you.??

I can get you a cheaper ticket if you let me amputate your legs: I can even take your thighs as a deposit," said the travel agent.

Superman, Iron Man, Batman"—Flyaway Hair winces visibly—"you name it. Rich, powerful, white alpha males who dress up in gimp suits and beat up ethnically diverse lower-class criminals.

She paused, staring into the void. The void, for its part, stared back unblinking.

As Terry Pratchett observed, inside every eighty-year-old man is an eight-year-old wondering what the hell just happened to him

WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES. In our youth, if we survive them, they're called learning experiences or teachable moments or some-such. And that which does not maim or kill us usually makes us stronger, albeit sometimes also sadder and more cynical.

Money. An instrument invented in ancient temple complexes, to keep track of debt: counters that acquired mobility and went a-walking, weaving webs of debt into vast and intricate meshes, enslaving and directing the labor of billions in service of the obligations created by its issuance. . . . Money: a shadow play projected on the walls of our minds by the dark sun of debt.

Although now that I'm in middle management I'm supposed to call it refactoring the strategic value proposition in real time with agile implementation," or, if I'm being honest, "making it up as I go along.

There's a very loud noise in my ear, not unlike a cat sneezing, if the cat is the size of the Great Sphinx of Giza and it's just inhaled three tons of snuff.

Then the screen comes on, showing a familiar menu on a blue background and I stare at it, transfixed, like a yokel who's never seen a television before. Because it's not a TV. It's a flat-screen PC running Windows XP Media Center Edition. They can't be that dumb. It's got to be a trap, I gibber to myself. Not even the clueless cannon-fodder-in-jumpsuits who staff any one of the movies on the shelf would be that dumb!

Identity is theft, don't trust anyone whose state vector hasn't forked for more than a gigasecond, change is the only constant, et bloody cetera.

Gordon actually wore the company uniform as if he meant it, unlike Bill, who occupied his uniform like a hermit crab living in an abandoned Coke can.

There is good management and bad management: good management is like air—you don't know it's there until it's gone away.

It's not as if he's had much of a chance until now, but somehow he has internalized the ur-cultural narrative: you grow up, go to university, get a job, meet Ms. Right, get married, settle down, have kids, grow old together . . . it's like some sort of checklist. Or maybe a list of epic quests you've got to complete while level-grinding in a game you're not allowed to quit, with no respawns and no cheat codes.

There's always some idiot who thinks that after the revolution they'll be the one sitting on top of the hill of corpses, dining on caviar served out of a bowl made of a chromed baby's skull.