Hammered Quotes

“Physics is like sex. Of course it can give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it. —Richard Feynman”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. —Henry Louis Mencken”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“Once the economic and then the religious troubles in the U.S. closed what was once the longest unguarded border in the world, Canada retreated into something like an armed camp, as aware as the United States used to be of just how desperate our neighbors to the south might be. The summers got hot and the winters got cold. The U.S. was awfully hungry for a while, too—especially when the Gulf Stream quit from Antarctic meltwater and the climate shift gave them searing droughts in the summer and winters like cold hell on earth. I didn’t even like to think about Britain and Ireland. The population is still dropping, but the food riots and the Christian Fascist regime are largely a thing of the past.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“Sorry doesn’t cut it in my world. Pay me back, or get the hell out of my life.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“For Leah. Yes. Because for her, I would crawl through fire.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“Leah and I connect, and we have since she was barely old enough to grab my finger and stare deeply into my eyes. There’s something about her that reminds me of Nell, come to think of it. Wide-eyed wonder and a whim of carbon steel.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“Barb saw the choreography of the upcoming fight unfold before her inner eye as if the combatants were actors belting taped marks.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“Barb let the joyous, icy clarity of combat wash over her.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“It would insinuate itself into the artificial personality files and trigger duplication of the data, and carefully controlled growth. Whether anything would come out of it, even the worm’s programmer-with his near infinite resources-could not say.

It was a gamble as well, but communication, wooing, conception, and procreation always are.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“Her dad raised his eyes from the newsfeed and offered her a level, considering look that told her he’d caught the impending request in her voice.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“His grin turns into a thoughtful pursing of the lips, and he actually seems to consider my question.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“My pain’s down 63 percent, my reflexes have actually improved, and I can sleep through the night without drugs for the first time in twenty years. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“There’s blood on my mouth, and through the twisted collar of his shirt I can see a pale handprint darkening where my left hand clenched, somehow not hard enough to break skin, crush bone. My whole body shudders and he pulls me naked into his embrace. I bury my head against his shoulder and I am weeping, am laughing, am shivering in the cold capsule of air.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“All the words I can find are stupid words, pointless ones.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“He’s warm and solid, present as an oak tree as he sighs and leans against me.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“If I turned my head to look at this woman on the street, it would be because of her hearing-because she is tall, and stern as the iron color of her hair. It would be because of the stubborn military shoulders and the chipped flint of an unmistakably Iroquois nose, the crows’s-feet at the corners of her eyes. I might not even notice the glittering steel of her left hand until she moved into my line of sight.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“The woman looking back at me is a stranger indeed. Her hair has grown out into a sort of boyish bob, steel black, silvering bangs falling across her forehead. They mostly hide the places where smooth, paler skin blends into her tanned medium-brown hide. The skin on the left side of her face, near the hairline, is oddly mottled, like a frog.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“It doesn’t feel like a real hand-the sensations of pressure and so forth are like the ones you get through pins and needles, and the brutalized musculature at the graft point still screams stiffly with any movement-but that it feels at all is a source of bewildering wonder. There’s still new input to the severed nerves, it’s discomfort now, no worse than the dull ache of a stubbed toe. Actually, for the first time in two and a half decades, my left arm hurts less than just about anything else, as the rest of my body is on fire with the sensations of reworking flesh. There’s a hand on my right arm, guiding, supporting-my new physical therapist, whom I have already decided I hate.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“The thing about really smark people is that they often see solutions you never would have anticipated.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“I see what Gabe sees in her, the fracturing brilliance of intellect concealed beneath that quiet exterior. There’s someone in there, someone as deep as Lake Ontario and sharp as a switchblade, unconventional and oddly ruthless.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“Everything this woman says surprises me.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“There’s something about Richard that’s hard to get used to, when you’ve been dealing with the likes of Valens, and I don’t know how to describe it. They both delight in tricking people, in holding all the cards.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“Elspeth thought he was watching her, and she made her expression intent and ungiving, resisting the urge to toy with her crucifix.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“Jenny Casey, you’ve skewered the pooch this time.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered

“Smart, funny Maman. If one must clean one’s room every time there are monsters under the bed, pretty soon-voilá!-no monsters!”
― Elizabeth Bear, Hammered