I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose, because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real.
Volunteering’s an early and strong indication that you’re not suited, he said.
Those created creations were treated like tools that talked, their sentience an annoying product of magic noise, by those little mortal demiurges who thought dominion a natural by-product of expertise...
The manager of my line told me, You never put anything down except to be read. Every word ever written is written to be read and if some go unread that‘s only chance, failure, they‘re like grubs that...
The fucking angels of memory were out. They had come out of their museums, out of their castles. They'd gone to war against whatever this incoming to-come was. The very facts of retrospection and fate...
Sometimes I’d go to his house. If I had some cool cards in my pack of Iceberg Updates, we’d compare collections, maybe swap a few.
I took the goats downslope a bit and they screamed at each other and I screamed too to see what it was like.
And I who months before had run into town screaming my accusation was shy to say it now that I was asked to put it in clear words. I’d grown used to this world in which everyone knew what had happened...
The branches dropped shaggy creepers that, when they reached the earth, hardened into roots and pried apart paving.
Oh for God’s sake, he said. The men and women stared. He could see them attempting exegesis on his outburst.
If she were studying Orciny, and there might be excellent reasons to do so, she'd be doing her doctorate in Folklore or Anthropology or maybe Comp Lit. Granted, the edges of disciplines are getting va...
Common form of establishment, for much of Besźel’s history, had been the DöplirCaffé: one Muslim and one Jewish coffeehouse, rented side by side, each with its own counter and kitchen, halal and koshe...
William Gibson told only half the story: like the future, the past is also here in the present, and just as unevenly distributed.
The poets and artists and philosophers, resistance activists, secret scouts and troublemakers, had become, as they must, soldiers.
In the streets of Un Lun Dun: a group of a girl, a half ghost, a talking book, a piece of rubbish, and two living words was unusual but not very.
He said, You’ll write it not because there’s no possibility it’ll be found but because it costs too much to not write it.
Why should we not shep naches from the accomplishments of our machines? This vicarious joy or success sounds somewhat odd, but it shouldn’t be. We get excited when our sports team wins a game; why sho...
UnLondon would have to look after itself. She wasn’t the Shwazzy. She was just someone. How could just someone be any help, whatever was going on?
The one that goes: I’d like to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.
The costumes raised memories of the Night of the Kinken Shards, when the New Quill Party had overrun the khepri ghetto in a storm of murder, shattering spit-sculptures in the Plaza of Statues, stampin...