The town was made of cubical buildings with steep roofs, each one painted a bright primary color that through the long winters was said to be cheering.
The rounded slopes, Phyllis said, indicated ancient water as clearly as the grain in petrified wood indicated the original tree. By the way she spoke Nadia understood that this was another of her disa...
The real locals were like fish in water, unaware and unimpressed.
The Amex man had even lifted his wrist to his mouth to take down a note, in a gesture obviously meant to be seen:
Strange how one remembered faces until you tried to look at them in your mind, when they turned away from you.
Someone should enjoy it, Ann said. When she was angry or bitter her voice became flat and distant, almost as if she were being matter-of-fact. It won’t be here long.
So what's the point? Why do it all? Why not be content with what you've got? Who were they, that they were so discontent? Who the fuck were they?
So now I’m popular? Freya says. They hate me, and I hit someone, and now they like me?
Sheer dumb sentience.
She recalled hearing how after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, they had built prison camps faster than medical facilities. They had expected riots and so had put people of color in jail preemptivel...
Sax had always been so uninterested in [power and gain] that it was hard for him to understand why anyone else would be. What was personal gain but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And what wa...
Remember: ease of representation. It’s always more than what you see, bigger than what you know. That said, people in this era did do it. Individuals make history, but it’s also a collective thing, a...
Reality is not a matter of our senses. It can’t be visualized.
People are foolish and bad, especially the French, and are always quickly seduced by power into insanity, and therefore lucky to have any kind of social order whatsoever, but the tougher the better.
Only this moment, always. We never get to change the past. We never get to know the future. No reason to wish for one place rather than another; no reason to say I wish I were home, or I wish I were i...
One sign of a good action is that in retrospect it appears inevitable.
Not that it would be wasting my time to chat in a bar with a good-looking woman, obviously, but I wanted to know as much as possible going in, because under the impact of a woman’s direct gaze I am li...
Marriage, Swan repeated, marveling at the word. To her it was a concept from the Middle Ages, from old Earth--an idea with a strong whiff of patriarchy and property. Not meant for space, not meant for...
Life itself is a moment like this, the soul beat down and held to knowledge: you keep on trudging upward, the goal shifts in and out of sight, always further away than you expected, and the work is ha...
If you want to write a novel about our world now, you’d better write science fiction, or you will be doing some kind of inadvertent nostalgia piece; you will lack depth, miss the point, and remain con...