Quotes from John Shirley

the world of commerce is restless; it's like a hungry child that keeps growing and never quite grows up

So you see, a man's history when other folks tell it is a pitiful confusion.

He liked living simply. And he liked living alone. He had grown to dislike physical affection. It was intrusive, and it bullied his self esteem, because he wasn't good at it.

Almost anyone could be Fascist under the right circumstances. If they get scared enough. It's because, you see, most people live their lives like sleepwalkers. They're not really awake, though they think they are. And sleepwalkers are easily lead. That's why we have to fight so hard. Because it never quite goes away.

When you serve a beer-cock an ear.

from the end of John Shirley's Black Glass, something like: the Singularity guys don't understand, they aren't copying us, our brains, just the noise we make

unsure of her first estimate of the

increasing blasé acceptance of the USA as a nation under siege from within, manning the barricades with the growing legions of hired cops, gypsy cops, rent-a-cops, uniformed thugs insulating the rich from the poor?

Garner had to search for his little girl in this endless sea of irrelevancy and indifference and preoccupied people and deteriorating places. This is crazy, this is hopeless ...

The greater the scope in implementing an activity, the greater the need for strict attention to small details.

But this was Stormland. There was always another front coming remorselessly at the coast. A Category Four was coming from the mid-Atlantic, angling to cross their northward flight path. The Butcher Bird should be turned inland to try to dodge the worst of it. But NoelLeuman had insisted they stay on this course. Leuman was a stormrider.

the so-called free world was a dictatorship that used media and conformist conditioning to enforce its dominion.

Social conventions were avenues as much as barriers.

It was largely a land without Borders - something that attracted him and disturbed him both. The land didn't need laws. But the people did.

The violation of the inner person is the greatest territorial crime of all.

You guys are staring at me like I'm nuts, but you're special- they have that mobile Fox Channel transmitter, on that bus that uses that satellite info and dodges the demons. They have that show The Clans and it's pure demonphile stuff.

Everyone was always in danger, after all. From cancer, from car crashes and plane crashes, from criminals. Most people managed denial; managed to pretend they were safe.

It was like the Iran/Contra hearings in the last century; then, too, the investigators had looked just so far and no further.

He had know guys all his life who gave him that feeling. Even as a kid. People who were always lying, even when they didn't have to.