cyberpunk-authors

"I've got nothing against corporatocracy myself, but nationalism doesn't die out overnight. We've seen that here, and we don't want it starting again."

"Kane felt like a Goth at the sack of Rome, watching his stream of piss wash the delicate paints from a piece of Grecian marble."

"The Valium washed over him like a lullaby."

"The sun had creased his face like a note that had been folded and refolded and kept in a dirty pocket."

"We outnumber the rich and always will. This is still a democracy, more or less, and we have the ability to vote with our brains and not some kind of mixed up idealism that makes us go against our own interest. And we can organize, so that when the rich and privileged don’t keep their promises, we have a way to make them listen."

"To give is best, live responsibly or die."

"“Boredom,” he says, “is the province of the unimaginative soul.”"

"In the beginning and the end, it’s all a crapshoot. The Cosmic Mind does play dice. Loves to gamble, in fact."

"“My angel,” he says, cradling her. “I’m not an angel, Daniel.” “Yes, you are.” “No! I’m not an angel and I’m not a whore. I have intelligence and passion, strength and perseverance. I am capable of abstract thought, intellectual accomplishment, and artistic expression just like you, sir.” He ponders that as the brougham trots up Fifth Street to Market. “What shall I call you, then?” Zhu smiles. “You may call me a woman.”"

"That’s what failure did to: run you out, plucked your bones, sucked you dry. It was revolting. A failed man is a loathsome thing."

"Prostitution has little to do with morality, and everything to do with poverty."

"The future survives because people care. Live responsibly or die."

"The girl with her face. A Devolved Entity Manifested from the Other Now? A demon that wants to off her? It’s like the rumors of concentration camps. So weird she can’t believe it, and so plausible she can’t afford to disbelieve it."

"She’s got space. Lots of space in her house. What about in her heart?"

"Cosmicists speak of the Great Good, equalizing humanity with all creatures and things. Does a cosmicist accept the death of a child as the same as—say—the destruction of a butterfly? Suppose it’s a rare butterfly and the child is one of twelve billion."

"I have not told the police about it. Every member of the police department I have encountered during my stay in San Francisco has been nearly as surly and intractable as my rapist friend, because I look like a hippie. Each time I attempted to explain myself I was rebuffed or threatened. From this experience I am tempted to draw an odd analogy: under stress, neither the policeman nor the rapist allows an opportunity for rational communication. Each one relies on violence to make to make his impression. This is not an accident, but, rather evidence of a widespread sickness. When will violence stop long enough for communication to begin? On second thought, perhaps I am doing the police department a grave disservice in not attempting to put them in contact with the rapist. Maybe, with just a little mind-bending, that rapist would make a damned good cop, and both could swagger together, true soul brothers, under the many-colored cloak of Fascism."

"I didn’t lie. I implied."

"Since they were little, wishing on the first star of the evening, they both understood this: the most exciting game in life is to invent yourself."

"By the time people could speak about mandatory population control in a rational way, it was too late."

"He uncorks the absinthe, pours three rounds.… “After the first glass you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. After the third, you see things as they really are, which is the most horrible thing in the world.”"

"What is destiny for any human being? What becomes of probabilities that collapse out of the timeline? Does destiny depend on who witnesses?"

"If women go into politics, they’ll wind up as bad as men."

"What was that teacher trying to do? That teacher was trying to break her spirit. But why would school do that? So you could become someone like her parents and believe in the things they believe in. So you won’t believe in the things they don’t believe in. And believe you’re a happy person whose life has meaning. So you will go to your job and do whatever gross thing someone tells you to do and get drunk on Friday and Saturday nights and pay taxes and bills. That’s why."

"Consider impact before you consider benefit."

"What is the value of a life when the world is burdened with twelve billion people?"

"Junk does that. Junk is a forge. You enter the fire and come out twisted."

"When you finally cash it in Out in Frisco; And you end this life of sin Out in Frisco; They will gently toll a bell, Plant your carcass in a dell, There’s no need to go to hell, You’re in Frisco."

"You are either the man in the white coat or you are the monkey. Susan sees herself as the monkey."

"The technopolistic plutocracy will dump pollutants into the atmosphere for another century on the grounds that compliance with limits is too expensive."

"“Acid,” says the guy with the eyes, “raises your powers of integration so that everything is important.” “Acid,” says Chiron, “lowers your powers of discrimination so that everything seems important.”"

"In Russia, history is something that, you know, used to be rewritten every five years. It's written once again, and it's just a game."

"Никаких философских проблем нет, есть только анфилада лингвистических тупиков, вызванных неспособностью языка отразить Истину."

"HIPCRIME You committed one when you opened this book. Keep it up. It's our only hope."

"SCANALYZER is the one single, the ONLY study of the news in depth that’s processed by General Technics’ famed computer Shalmaneser, who sees all, hears all, knows all save only that which YOU, Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere, wish to keep to yourselves."

"I don’t believe you can cow people into loyalty. Subservience, maybe. But then you must always trust the retainer who guards your back."

"I’m unattuned to happiness."

"Did you never hear it said that what sets the genius apart from the plodder is the ability to see what happens and not what he expects to happen?"

"Some people—mostly attractive women—don’t believe attractive women can act."

"If you so much as touch him, I’ll have to smash every bone in your body—twice, to make sure I didn’t miss any the first time. I don’t recommend the experience."

"—Blessed are they who expect the worst, for they shall get it!"

"—If I ever get good at hospital politics, I think I shall start to hate myself."

"A determined elbow jabbed him in the ribs, and he had to come close enough to waking to resist the nudges. He put both arms around his petite, dark, power-packed wife, Midge, and uttered an optimistic grunt. Seven years of marriage enabled her to translate: “Five more minutes?”"

"—What was I thinking earlier about lunatics making their own version of truth? Why specify lunatics?"

"They’d have me out and shoot me the first day they took charge. Anyone like me is intolerably subversive to an authoritarian régime, because I’m not interested in imposing my ideas by force on other people."

"—Among the other things lunatics make: their own version of truth."

"Now, listen. Marriage is binding as a civil contract, but it has—like all my favorite contracts—an escape clause. I make my living by spotting them."

"“And there are more idiots than suckers in the world,” Barney said with a rueful chuckle. “One every second, not one a minute, right?”"

"Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view."

"“I don’t believe in God,” said the captain. “I wouldn’t care to believe in anyone who could make such a stinking lousy species as the one you belong to.”"

"If you want to know what's shortly due for the guillotine look for the most obvious of all symptoms: extremism. It is an almost infallible sign — a kind of death-rattle — when a human institution is forced by its members into stressing those and only those factors which are identificatory, at the expense of others which it necessarily shares with competing institutions because human beings belong to all of them."