Quotes from Bruce Sterling

A race without curiosity will never explore every possibility

I think I could write another book as surprising as this one, or even as weird as this one; but it would no longer surprise people that I can be surprising. My audience would no longer find it weird to discover that I can be weird.

From where I sit it today, pirate country starts about ten miles east of me. Foulness, Paglesham and the Blackwater. To this day, pubs out there go silent when a stranger walks in. You're standing on their dirt, after all. A life on the ocean waves is one thing, but blood and soil are entirely another.

But old people usually seemed pretty embarrassed to bring up such matters right in front of young people. Probably because of the inherent implication that the world's old people were ecological criminals.

People who might once have bought a newspaper to beguile themselves now look at their Android. Magzines readers look at their Android, too. Amazingly, even manufactures of chewing gum have taken a hit, because nervously chewing while staring out the window has become nervously tapping while staring into a handled screen.

My IQ? No. I can't read," she said proudly. "But I'm Rep One, the majority whip in the House. And I'm married to Senator One.

History's kaleidoscope worked its permutations, its pace ever faster, approaching some unknown crescendo.

I won the school essay contest!" Laszlo piped up in English. "I get to stay with the president today!" Maya swallowed hard. "That's great, kid. You must be really proud." "I am the future," Laszlo confided shyly. "I'm a big ragamuffin," Maya said.

He spread his arms in benediction, like that Jesus statue in Brazil before the Maoists blew it up.

History's kaleidoscope worked its permutations, its pace ever faster, approaching some unknown crescendo. Patterns changed and warped and flew apart, each chip of light a human life.

Getting what you want is a serious matter. It is far more transformative than frustration.

Alex direly wanted to try something stupid, but he wasn't about try anything stupid under these circumstances. He'd wait till he won their confidence, till they gave him a lot more initiative and leeway. Then he'd try something stupid.

To run the world, you had to find it in yourself to grit your teeth and just fake it. Just stare them down, never back off.

Every Concatenate world faced biological problems as the habitat aged.

Time had a way of making passion into work. He had what he wanted. He had his dream. He had to live it and breathe it and do its budget.

I hate watching people blow all operational security, and spew their guts like a teenage burglar, drunk in a bar. We're professionals, for Christ's sake, and she's just a prole.

It was an ancient machine: a relic of a lunatic era when men first pried open the Pandora crypts of physics. An age when cosmic explosives had spread across the surface of Earth like bleeding scabs across the brain of a paretic.

Sustainability is never a static goal. It can only be a process.

His sister wiped at her runny mascara.

Community and anarchy. Politics pulls things together; technology blows them apart.

You will soon be released into an area that has been ideologically decriminalized

The weeds are like sundogs. They thrive on disaster. They move in anywhere systems break down. After this disaster the plants that grow fastest on scorched earth will thrive. . . . ' ¶ 'More weeds,' Vera concluded.

It's an old story," Ryumin said. "Something like that actually happened once; I feel sure of it. But I filed off the serial numbers and made it my own.

Utopia: a synonym for oblivion.