Excession Quotes
"The horror came for the commandant again that night, in the grey area that was the half-light from a full moon."
"The light was blinding white and the cold, thin air rasped the back of his throat."
"The wind buffeted him, raising veils of snow and ice."
"Men, machines and drag-lines moved like insects in the bottom of the vast cup of shining ice."
"The face was pure white except for a speckling of black dots which from this distance appeared just like boulders."
"It looked dangerously steep, he thought, but cutting it at a shallower angle would have taken longer."
"They were forever being hurried along by headquarters …"
"I know what happens here, he thought. I know what happens to me. I remember the pain. I see the girl. I know this bit. I know what happens."
"Why don’t I stop running? Why can’t I stop? Why can’t I wake up?"
"I am proud of what I did. I wish it had not fallen to me to do what had to be done, but I am glad that I did it to the best of my capabilities, and I would do it again."
"The Culture had had lots of minor OCPs, problems that could have proved to be terminal if they’d been handled badly, but so far it had survived them all."
"The Culture’s ultimate OCP was popularly supposed to be likely to take the shape of a galaxy-consuming Hegemonising Swarm, an angered Elder civilisation or a sudden, indeed instant visit by neighbours from Andromeda."
"That was the Dependency Principle; that you could never forget where your Off switches were located, even if it was somewhere tiresome."
"The Minds had long ago come up with a proper name for it; they called it the Irreal, but they thought of it as Infinite Fun."
"Metamathics led to everything else, it led to the places that nobody else had ever seen or heard of or previously imagined."
"It’s like being on an escalator. At the moment, confined to this universe, we’re stuck to this stair, this level."
"In the end, to his mortification, the princess had defected to the machine hive-mind."
"He was a genuine misfit, something even rarer in the Culture than a baby born physically deformed."
"The Mind didn’t like him doing this, but it amused him, and it was almost the only thing he did which annoyed it."
"The plain fact was that he didn’t like talking to people, he didn’t like mixing with them and he didn’t even like thinking about them individually."
"Shit, don’t you hate it when the Gods come out to play?"
"It was a very lonely place, and Gestra Ishmethit had always craved loneliness."
"The rarefied, specialist Minds in the warships themselves had been consulted like the rest on their fate those five hundred years ago."
"Drones and other AIs were tolerated on Tier but very closely watched."
"Tier, after all, was a statement, a treasure, a symbol."
"Terrible thing when one of these gas-giant floater beasties suffers from flatulence."
"A month of challenging, ground-breaking art and ruthlessly enforced fun."
"The festival is - what? - two days old? And already I am tired of it."
"I thought of taking a holiday while it was occurring, but I am expected to be here, of course."
"It was on an Affronter light cruiser, burned into its scar-hull."
"Serve us all right if it turned out it is a projection of some sort, some God’s jest."
"Don’t worry; I’ll have some fun and then I’ll be ready to ship on out when the time comes."
"It’s Character Forming, currently housed in the GSV Zero Gravitas."
"Dear holy shit, if it was all engine even the superlifter wouldn’t be able to keep up with it."
"Two hundred and thirty-three thousand times the speed of light. Dear holy fucking shit."
"Look on the bright side; at least the problem was out of its fields now."
"Looking into the screen was like peering into some vast planetary airscape."
"A purist would call the place where they now existed ultraspace one positive."
"If you so much as think of committing another act of treachery, it will happily reduce you to hot gas."
"Whatever else," it said awkwardly, formally, "always remember that you are free to leave me at any time."
"Because I want to," it said eventually, as though only realising this itself for the first time.
"To fully appreciate the beauty of a weapon was to admit to a kind of shortsightedness close to blindness."
"The future alone knew who or what else they would take with them."
"The war had begun and all the Attitude Adjuster could do was play out the part it had agreed to play."
"Death, he remembered somebody saying once, was a kind of victory. To have lived a long good life, a life of prodigious pleasure and minimal misery, and then to die; that was to have won."
"Live well and then die, so that the you that is you now can never be again, and only tricks can re-create something that might think it is you, but is not."
"There was, of course, no real choice. Call it his upbringing."
"Sometimes personal pride must take a subsidiary place to military pragmatism, however hateful we may find this."
"What I called masculinity, what I celebrated in it was just an excuse for me-ness, wasn't it?"
"The life-support collar was in a box with the other emergency medical supplies, thoughtfully located below waist level so you could crawl to it."
"In the dream, he watched as Zreyn Tramow rose from a bed of pink petals. Some still adhered, like small local blushes dispensed upon her pink-brown nakedness."
"At such moments she felt the loneliness not just of this fathomless wilderness and this near-utter emptiness, but of her own position, and of her whole life."
"She supposed she might have transferred some of her need for a parent to her father, but she had scarcely felt that he was a part of her life."
"She hoped that it was secret within herself, but knew too well the extent of the knowledge-base."
"Such trust, and the multiplying opportunities to provide proof of her diligence and exercised wisdom, ought at last to be enough for her."
"Her fears, her needs, her insecurities, her compensating drives and ambitions; they could be plumbed, measured and then used."
"The enigma attracted her, no less than the impossibly old star."
"Attention drawn, she looked closer automatically."
"Genar-Hofoen wiped his face with his hands and looked around the cabin."
"Well now, let’s see … If I had been, do you think I would answer you truthfully?"
"‘I’m very sorry to intrude,’ said the ship, making no great effort to sound sincere."
"‘The sentient module Scopell-Afranqui is dead,’ the ship told him."
"‘I’ll take your word for it,’ she said, climbing back on top of him."
"You’re fucking with my head either way, aren’t you?"
"‘Sweet dreams, Genar-Hofoen,’ the Grey Area said."
"The tower’s slave-drones brought Byr her food and attended to her toilet."
"‘Did I kill it?’ Byr had to think for a moment. Then she realised."
"‘You’re my price, Genar-Hofoen,’ it told him."
"I am not as Eccentric as I appear, but consider this: only a craft that was predisposed to a degree of eccentricity in the first place would have taken on the style of life I did, forty years ago."
"‘Nevertheless, I am threatening you like that, Genar-Hofoen,’ the avatar said."
"‘What you gave me you gave unasked. Some of it was unwanted,’ she said coldly."
"I’ve spent the last forty years wishing I could correct my mistake."
"You are - and this is - my last chance to get it right."
"Your friend the Killing Time deserves congratulations, and probably merits therapy."
"Implicating the Steely Glint while it is in charge of military developments around the Excession will only make us look like the guilty parties."
"Speaking personally, Screce Orbital is as pleasant as could be, and as devoutly un-militarised as one might wish a Peace faction world to be."
"Supposed to be a companion, actually just a pain."
"Perhaps the whole story isn’t worth knowing."
"Other people’s problems have always held a profound fascination for me."
"Other people’s are always the best problems to be involved with."
"The briefest of introductions completed, they stood facing each other in the circular room under the translucent dome."
"Intensity, you know; make the most of your one time."
"I think surrendering is our only sensible course."
"All we’re looking for when we Sublime is our score..."
"The implication that the ships from Pittance have been used as part of a conspiracy to trick the Affront into a war has been noted."
"I still say it was somehow a test; an emissary. We were tried and found wanting."