The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders.
You couldn’t live close to war and not have it grab you eventually.
Hell, we’re all bullet bait sooner or later. Doubt it makes much difference. You make it to sixteen, you’re a goddamn legend.
Her face was smeared with mud and blood and ash. Just another bit of debris in the wreckage of war.
Maggot twitch, some people called it. If you’d seen much of the war, you had it. Some more. Some less. But everybody had it.
We are nature. Our every tinkering is nature, our every biological striving. We are what we are, and the world is ours. We are its gods. Your only difficulty is your unwillingness to unleash your potential fully upon it.
I’m a chess piece. A pawn,’ she said. ‘I can be sacrificed, but I cannot be captured. To be captured would be the end of the game.
But then, that was the problem with pretty toy stitches. When real life got hold of them, they always tore out.
Believing is for Santa Claus, right? It’s for Tooth Fairies. It’s for your boyfriend when he says he’s never met anyone like you and wants to feel you up. That’s believing. It’s for little kids. Belief. You believe in God?
Belief.” He snorted. “I could kiss a thousand crosses. Fucking belief.
Jesus walked on water, so maybe he makes aquifers, too.
Some things, it was better not to think about. It just made you mad and angry.
A gamble. Everything was a damn gamble. Betting against luck and the Fates, again and again, and again. She kept walking, waiting for the bullet.
Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way if justice.
Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way of justice.
Tool wondered if the girl was going mad. It happened to people. Sometimes they saw too much and their minds went away. They lost the will to survive. They curled up and surrendered to madness.
No one else could see all the bodies she’d left behind, but they were there, looking at her. Or maybe that was just her, looking at herself, and not liking what she saw. Knowing she could never escape her own judging gaze.
Never beg for mercy. Accept that you have failed. Begging is for dogs and humans.
They’d blame a castoff just for breathing. You could be good as gold and they’d still blame you.
Crew up, Nailer!” Lucky Girl shouted. “You think I’m going to pull your ass up here like a damn swank?
I was interested in political failure here in the U.S. The way we’re failing to work together to solve even our smallest problems, let alone the complex ones.
Science fiction has these obsessions with certain sciences – large scale engineering, neuroscience.
I’m not proud of it, but I’m a great liar when I travel. I smile and lie, and things are smooth.
I’m particularly interested in black swan events: unprecedented surprises that destroy the conventional wisdom about how the world works.