Quotes from John Shirley

People in extreme conditions are suddenly naked, realer than normal, perhaps even more alive.

I'm not quite pompous enough to think of myself as an educator or a man capable of definitive refutation of falsehoods.

As far as I know Misha wrote the first cyberpunk poetry.

I do sometimes watch 'Dr. Who' and while the stories barely make sense, if at all, the doctor is such great company I don't care.

Weekends are a bit like rainbows they look good from a distance but disappear when you get up close to them.

It was a bitter thing. You might give up lawing, but some no-account would pop up from the underbrush of the past and shoot you in the back.

The land didn't need laws. But people did.

There were just too many questions; the answers were one more thing being rationed to the survivors ...

For decades the social structures that created nuclear families, that kept families whole and together, had eroded, had finally broken down completely. Broken homes made broken homes made broken homes.

In the early days he'd felt something like it at Crossworld. There was corporate loyalty, some sense of belonging. But the higher you went in the company, the falser the camaraderie became, and the more you knew that what appeared to cooperation was ambition, was a kind of competition.

If the modern world were a patient in my care..." She shook her head. "I would diagnose it suicidal.

Labels only confuse people. The smarter people recognize artists who transcend categories. But I always try to entertain. It's in my nature; writers are born to entertain. If that means working ostensibly within a genre, fine.

Innocence could be considered a discrete state of mind.

I'm incapable of writing without social commentary. I like to think that it's integrated and not really heavy handedly didactic.

I think paranoia can be instructive in the right doses. Paranoia is a skill.

I'm cursed with empathy. I'm also by nature way too opinionated.

I'm trying to trick people into thinking about the unthinkable by using pop culture images.

I do try to be of some use in the world. I sometimes do volunteer work with kids, and manage to help some people a little, but really making a significant difference can be hard.

No Gods Or Kings. Only Man. -Andrew Ryan

If the modern world were a patient in my care... I would diagnose it suicidal. - Dr. Sofia Lamb

A man must make of his life a ladder that he never ceases to climb -- if you're not rising, you are slipping down the rungs, my friend.

I believe in no God, no invisible man in the sky. But there is something more powerful than each of us, a combination of our efforts, a Great Chain of industry that unites us. But it is only when we struggle in our own interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide. Any man who tells you different either has his hand in your pocket, or a pistol to your neck. —Andrew Ryan

Some automatic responses are good — they're skills, and we need them for life and labor. But the tendency to accumulate programming tends to have a life of its own — or more accurately, to steal the life that belongs to us.

On the surface, said the deep voice of Andrew Ryan booming from hidden speakers, The farmer tills the soil, trading the strength off his arm for a land of his own. But the parasites say, 'No! What is yours is ours! We are the state; we are God; we demand our share!