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 boy went to the low-down part of the attic where he drew, and drew a lizard in a bottle between the stems of the wallpaper’s design. He came back the next day and, beside it, he drew a cat in anot...
So what’s your alternative?’ people say, as if that’s logic. We don’t have to have an alternative, that’s not how critique works. We may do, and if we do, you’re welcome, but if we don’t that no more...
Oratees are addicts. Strung out on an Ambassador’s Language.
On the hill we used a different, vaguer calendar than the one I’ve since learned. The seasons ours described—summer, dimming, and winter—were suited to a different place: the mountain had two seasons...
Oh for God’s sake, he said. The men and women stared. He could see them attempting exegesis on his outburst.
It's not just us keeping them apart. It's everyone in Beszel and everyone in Ul Qoma. Every minute, every day. We're only the last ditch: it's everyone in the cities who does most of the work. It work...
It would be absurd, a ridiculous myopia, to hold up October as a simple lens through which to view the struggles of today. But it has been a long century, a long dusk of spite and cruelty, the excresc...
It is a jungle where hierarchies of infinities tower like prehistoric beasts.
Edward Gibbon: As the happiness of a future life is the great object of religion, we may hear without surprise or scandal that the introduction, or at least the abuse, of Christianity, had some influe...
But sharing has its limits. It might make you famous, but chances are it won’t earn you a buck. It might find you new people to connect with, but it won’t make it any easier to click with them. And it...
«Si riferisce ai loro poteri magici? Vorrei, lo vorrei tanto. Ma anche così questi scavi sono incomparabili. La cultura materiale non ha nessun senso. Non esiste nessun’altra parte al mondo in cui si...
When I think of my age I think in years, still, even after all this time and travel. It’s bad form, and ship-life should have cured me of it. Years? one of my first officers shouted at me. I don’t giv...
When I approached and told her the key-maker wasn’t there she cursed filthily and threw something hard against the step, shouting, What am I supposed to do with this now? It bounced away. I waited whi...
This is kraken year zero, Moore said. This is Anno Teuthis. We’re in the end times. What d’you think’s been going on?
There were those Hosts who thought something better could have been said and better thoughts therefore thought, had I only been made to do other things than I had. That I could have been a better simi...
The early years of a Bes (and presumably an Ul Qoman) child are intense learnings of cues. We pick up styles of clothing, permissible colours, ways of walking and holding oneself, very fast. Before we...
The Tattoo. You wouldn't say charming -- that was hardly the adjective, but something, there was something to him. If you were deep in self-hate but stained with ego enough that you needed your death-...
The Canadians had Terrell. He was uninfected, in quarantine, and knew nothing.
So I would stand in that cupboard and see how the stores were decreasing. I knew we had weeks to go before all of it was gone but I knew also that it was depleting and that various staples would be fi...