Use Of Weapons Quotes
"Happiness? Happiness... is to wake up, on a bright spring morning, after an exhausting first night spent with a beautiful... passionate... multi-murderess."
"The liquid it contained was the same colour as his eyes, and swilled around lethargically in the sunlight under his heavy-lidded gaze."
"He drained the glass, then studied it as the alcohol made its way down his throat."
"Without taking his eyes from the view, he suddenly jerked his arm, throwing the glass over his shoulder, back into the cool hall, where it vanished into the shadows and shattered."
"The young man on the balcony turned away from the view over the city and walked back inside the hall, only a little unsteadily."
"He rested one hand on the surface of the great table, and put the other up to and over his scalp, as if through thick long hair, though in fact his head was shaved."
"The young man shrugged. ‘It was an odd sort of relationship.’"
"He made his way towards another corner of the hall, and a tall pile of clothes and guns."
"The ship’s name was like some huge sea creature, bumping into the hull of his boat; like a battering-ram thudding into the walls of the castle keep."
"Everything was metaphor; all things were something other than themselves."
"You bastards! he thought, not sure, even then, exactly who he meant."
"Semi-arid; an indeterminate scrub - stamped down inside the perimeter of the village - vanished quickly beyond it, into a yellow-glowing mist."
"That’s sort of . . . re-decorating a planet, right?"
"A few times, I had the feeling I was being watched."
"If that GSV hadn’t been on its way here anyway, they’d have diverted it because of this."
"Love, she maintained, was a process; not a state. Held still, it withered."
"Sex was an infringement, an attack, an invasion."
"You have to feel the kick, and see the debris. Real debris."
"You’re retreating. A minute ago you were telling me I would die."
"If I’m lifting this guy out of a hostile environment, I have to have the tools to do the job."
"He had been to so many different places and seen so much the same and so much utterly different that he was amazed by both phenomena."
"Everywhere they found themselves, the galaxy bubbled with life and its basic foods kept on speaking back to it."
"Their excuse was that he was a limited creature, adapted to certain sorts of planets and societies and types of warfare."
"He smiled a little grimly, and took another deep breath from the drug bowl."
"They’d taken him to the furnace room, stripped him naked; he’d escaped, but soldiers had been pounding down the stairs and he’d had to run."
"He imagined that from the other side of the city, the hotel must look rather strange, with its topmost floor fully lit, the others practically black."
"He supposed he had forgotten how different the setting of the canyon made the city, compared to others."
"He watched them as they hit the black sill outside, where they grew steadily but imperceptibly to form a soft white ledge."
"The woman seemed asleep. She smiled slightly, and the exact geography of her face was altered by the forces that the grey-haired man exerted on her back, shoulders and flanks."
"But wait. There were links between Beychae and the Vanguard Foundation. If this is so..."
"To be great you have to be on the winning side. Part of greatness is knowing that."
"You can avoid the cliff completely, you can walk along the top for as long as you have the nerve, you can even choose to leap off."
"There are always choices, and even then, there’s usually something you’ve missed."
"You feel you’ve done something. It’s an achievement."
"What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead?"
"Every year like part of a sentence, every ring a shackle, chained and chaining to the past."
"Perhaps that’s only right; perhaps that’s what evolution requires, to leave the field free for younger, unencumbered minds."
"How many healthy people do you think actually say to themselves, 'Hey, I’m healthy today!'"
"All that’s happened is that reality has caught up with the way people always did behave anyway."
"The fact a machine could have done it faster doesn’t alter the fact that it was you who actually did it."
"They will not make you a carpenter or a blacksmith any more than mastering writing will make you a clerk."
"Yet birds fly better than we do, and fish swim better. Do we stop gliding or swimming because of this?"
"No-one wins all the time, sir. Not through skill, anyway, and the Culture does not believe in luck."
"To be good at soldiering is a great curse, I think sometimes."
"Sometimes they need you not to know you are fighting on the wrong side."
"There is no certainty; least of all in Special Circumstances, where the rules are different."
"If nothing else, at least we need an excuse; think how many people need none at all."
"To the Culture, to its total lack of respect for all things majestic."
"No soldiering, he recalled Sma saying, some time ago now. ‘No fucking soldiering,’ he muttered to himself."
"Public opinion in the Cluster could tolerate the technologically enhanced continuation of a pointless war so long as men, women and children died in relatively small, regular batches."
"The Hegemonarchy was retreating across the plains and into the mountains as its beleaguered forces fell back before the Empire’s motorized cavalry."
"The officers seemed to know more about the disposition of their enemy’s forces than they did about the feelings of their own men."
"Most of the time he needed an interpreter; only the top brass spoke the Cluster’s common tongue, but even so he suspected the troops felt closer to somebody who spoke a different language but asked them questions than they did to somebody who shared their language and only ever used it to give orders."
"‘It’s called decapitation,’ he told the priests. ‘The Imperial Court travels to Willitice Lake at the start of every Second Season; the high command comes to brief them. We drop the Victorious in on them, the day the general staff arrive.’"
"‘You have to leave, Cheradenine,’ she told him."
"I am doing all I can. I want her out of there as much as you do, but while he has her, there is just nothing more I can do; except attack, and that probably would be the death of her."
"I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk."
"‘But just because something does not have an ending,’ Ky shouted, ‘doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a . . . conclusion.’"
"Just despair, just the last laugh to have, opening a mouth through the bone to confront the world direct."
"Such consummate skill, such ability, such adaptability, such numbing ruthlessness, such a use of weapons when anything could become weapon."
"He pressed the gun hard against his temple and pulled the trigger."
"Skaffen-Amtiskaw thought the man was mad; certainly he was weird."
"He did not want to be made well. He would not listen to sense."
"The man was a walking mess and there were still two bullets inside him."
"He stumbled another couple of steps, shook Sma off, and turned round once, taking in the parkland."