Out on Blue Six Quotes

“the Bureau of Happiness regrets to inform you that your application for Aptitudinal and Vocational Training as a toymaker Class 16/B has not been successful.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“My name is Kilimanjaro West,” he said, and something in the way he spoke that name made the crowded ’lectrovan fall electrically quiet. “Pleased to meet you all.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“We measure our own humanity by how we respond to the unprogrammed, the unpredictable.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“There is a value in unprogrammed elements in a programmed world,”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“he could be anyone, anything, nuh? You want us all to get Social Counseling, eh? Everyone up in West One?”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“A bird-of-paradise woman paused in her flight to be astounded. “Yah, you stupid or something? That’s the Love Police, you know?” “The what?” “Fug! You are stupid! Never heard of West One?”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“only one man was left in Neu Ulmsbad Square to watch the black and silver pantycars come tunneling out of the clouds. “Is this part of it?” asked the man called Kilimanjaro West.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“This piece of Performance Art entitled ‘The Elector Passes’ has been brought to you by the members of the Raging Apostles,”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“In the dying moments of the Happening, each knew themselves to have been touched by something quite precious and rare and extraordinary. Something that had been taken from them years and years before. Something that some of them had never known they could experience.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“The man called Kilimanjaro West watched with wonder and delight and everything was new.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“Only one man was not surprised. He was not surprised because he had no concept of normality that the events in Neu Ulmsbad Square could violate.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“the small knot of raincoated citizens loitering at a waxman’s booth suddenly cast off their waxed raincoats to become iridescent birds of paradise and pulled from the waxman’s awning long, streaming banners with which they danced through the crowds of workaday citizens, wrapping them in rippling silk and mystery while from the back of the booth roman candles ignited and fountained silver fire into the air.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“There were human faces among the angels and demons, mortals among the immortals, flesh amidst the stones. He strained his eyes to quarter the fluted, sculpted masonry. There they were. They were not so hard to find now that he knew what to look for. “Hello!” he called.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“he looked up and around him in awe and amazement. And saw the faces in the architecture.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“in the continued existence of those other things he saw his own being reflected.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“Now that he knew that he was, that he existed to celebrate his existence, he looked with delight and fascination at every all-night hot-food stall, every neon welcome to a caste bar or club, every vagrant waft of steam from the pneumatique ventilators, every puddle of yellow streetlight, every rain-slick cobble, because in the continued existence of those other things he saw his own being reflected.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“onward he went, a named thing, rooted in the universe, yet apart from it, through the night and the rain-dancing streets.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“And so he took a name. From the unbelievable towers of light he took a name he felt was worthy of his massive uniqueness. “Kilimanjaro West,” he said. The stolen name fit well. “I am Kilimanjaro West.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“Uniquely, he understood what his days with BeeJee &ersenn had been teaching him: he, alone, was the alien.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“He fell to his knees, and as the twin arcologies reduced him to nothing, he also came out of his annihilated anonymity to realize that he was special, he was unique, that his light shone brighter than all the million glowworm windows, for he alone knew nothing.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“Names were the nails of history. Things were, had been, would be because they had names to guide them through time. Without a name he had no time-boundedness. Therefore he must have a name. But everything was already named, and all names were assigned. He would have to steal one.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“There is something I must do, but it is not here.” “Then where is it?” “I do not know.” “What is it?” “I do not know.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“he sensed something different: a questing, a questioning, an impatience that seemed to reflect his own incomprehension and hunger for history. Each time he sat in the green glow of the spirit lamp, he felt a disquiet, a need to go onward, outward, to embrace an entire universe within his arms.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“Whatever it was in his eyes she had seen, it made her take him home with her. I shouldn’t be doing this, she told herself as she spooned her fleech-mush into a bowl and reconstituted it with water in the dispenser. A nonsocialised introversion level 6 winger with Grade 3 narcissistic tendencies doesn’t do this.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“Hunger. The first word he had spoken as BeeJee &ersenn knelt beside him on the streaming cobbles. He had rubbed his hands across his belly and said, “Why do I feel this?” Such an incredible question.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“the monsoon rains rained, rained, rained down on the streets of Yu. And he would watch them, and the questions would begin again. So much he did not understand about the condition of being human.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“Was he some test from the Ministry of Pain? Some awful assessment, and if so, had she passed or failed?”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“Something about him made her watch him, his big hands held out to receive the falling drops, alms of heaven, catching them in his mouth, smiling as they streamed down his face, his chin, his cheeks. Her heart sent her one way. Her feet sent her another, splashing across the street to his side.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“Sometimes he irritated her so much that she wanted to throw him back to the rain. The way he sat, the way he watched; watched, watched; what? Rain. And his questions, his utter and absolute ignorance.”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six

“Something about him made her watch him, his big hands held out to receive the falling drops, alms of heaven, catching them in his mouth, smiling as they streamed down his face, his chin, his cheeks. Her heart sent her one way. Her feet sent her another,”
― Ian McDonald, Out on Blue Six