“Zane looks pensive, and then his lips twitch. “They say most girls end up marrying a guy just like their dad.” “Oh God … That’s so lame,” I say, spluttering as coffee dribbles down my chin. “I believe it’s a tried and tested theory,” he says, standing up and wiping my chin with the back of his hand. I jolt at his touch. “Now it’s a theory? I thought it was a saying? Next you’ll be telling me it’s a fact.” I flop back down on the couch. “Empirical evidence shows that sixty-eight percent of girls marry a guy who displays similar personality traits to her father ...” His voice trails off as I shake my head. “What?” he asks, his palms open and raised. “You really need to get out more. Where’d you glean that interesting nugget? The desperate men’s journal perhaps?”
“The way I figure it, here in New Earth, men s power has won out over women s power, just like it s done on Mainground. But men still fear women s power. No one ever forgets their mother s power to give them nourishment or withhold it. And men specially don t forget it, because they never grow into women themselves, and never lose a child s craving for the comfort of women s bodies.”
“I won’t pressure you, Ari, but I’m not opposed to subtle acts of persuasion.”
“When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things.”
“We have to destroy the radioactive brain of Madame Curie.”
“A minute later the steam stopped. By then, I was soaking wet and, no doubt, my pores were open. Some people pay a fortune for this kind of beauty treatment. I got mine for free, if you disregard the bruises, headache and all those dead people. - Corin Hayes, Silent City (working title)”
“I have never met a person who possessed a privilege who did not exercise that privilege to the fullest extent that they possibly could. Say what you like of a belief...of a party...of a finance system..of a power. All I see is privilege and its consequences. States are not in my opinion composed of structures supporting privilege but of structures denying it...in other words deciding who is not invited to the table.”
“The human brain has a natural ability, inherent in its mechanism, to work on many levels, in a process of constant promptings, in a type of self-preservation. If only humans understood... Most ignore it.”
“Imagine a perfect world”
“Shunting closer, I snuggle into his chest, soaking up his fresh woodsy scent. His arms encircle me and pull me close. “You always smell like home,” I whisper under my breath. Smooth, soft fingers tilt my chin upward, and I’m startled when my face meets his. Tears glisten in his eyes as he looks at me adoringly. Pressing his forehead to mine, he kisses me sweetly, his lips making brisk tantalizing sweeps across my mouth. “My heart is your home,” he whispers, his voice breathless. “It always will be.”
“– No SF novel ever won the Booker, growls a prowling clansman on his way into the SF Café. The librarian swings a shotgun from inside her longcoat, blasts the bullshit axiom from the air. Screw the Booker, she thinks. She’d rather have a hookah.”
“In Sneffels Yoculis craterem kem delibat umbra Scartaris Julii intra calendas descende, audas viator, et terrestre centrum attinges. kod feci. Arne Saknussem”
“science enables you to look things differently.”
“The best time to plan a tree was twenty years ago; the second best time is now.”
“I learned as a kid that homo sapiens would rather fight other homo sapiens than microbes. For one thing, it’s easier. And there’s something satisfying about knowing somebody else is the bad guy and seeing them laid out on the street in front of you. Something human. Microbes? The little bastards just go hide, multiply, and come back to bite you when you least expect it.”
“Since he d stepped out of medical school, all he d ever done was fulfil the same three basic templates, again and again and again. The possibility of infinite variation had led only to convergence.”
“When we decided to have Julie, I couldn’t carry her. We sat down and the hard numbers stared back at us. I made twice as much as Fern. We wouldn’t have been able to feed ourselves, let alone another mouth, if I’d been the one to hold her. And so we both went for the operation, and they took eggs from the two of us and made them one. And then I squeezed Fern’s hand when she went into the theatre, and when she came out again they’d put it inside her. And sheltered by her body, the one cell that was us divided and became two, and then three, and then four hundred million, and then they divided into parts. Lungs, heart, brain, mouth. And finally, when she was ready, Julie divided from Fern and there were three of us.”