The Sky Road Quotes

“Whatever the truth about the Deliverer, she will remain in my mind as she was shown on that statue, and all the other statues and murals, songs and stories: riding, at the head of her own swift cavalry, with a growing migration behind her and a decadent, vulnerable, defenceless and rich continent ahead; and, floating bravely above her head and above her army, the black flag on which nothing is written.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“The scene was biblical, exodus and apocalypse in one.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“The ablation cascade!”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“To be absolutely certain that she was right would, as far as she was concerned, be the end of her. Doubt was her only hope, her comfort and companion since childhood, her scepticism her sole security.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“you think it better to die free than to live as slaves. We may get the chance some day, but let’s try to delay our heroic deaths for a bit, eh?’ ‘Yes indeed.’ She wanted”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“people think they have more life to lose if they have a long one to look forward to – but I think it’s a false logic. A long life of oppression or shame is worse than a short one, after all.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“The chance of a long life has only made them more afraid of death than ever.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“What’s the difference between a God who makes no difference and takes no side and no God at all?”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“stop worrying about socialism and start getting ready for barbarism, because that’s what’s coming down the pike,”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“die old and leave a good-looking corpse.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“The diplomats dismissed the very idea that they might even have the slightest thought of such a deeply unworthy emotion.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“had time to become what the Japanese called an idoru, a software representation that was better than the real thing, smarter and sexier than any possible human mind or form, like those wide-eyed, faux-innocent anime brats or the simulated stars of pornography and romance. Sex wasn’t the half of it – there were other codes, other keys, in the semiotics of charm: the subtle suggestions of wisdom, the casual hints at a capacity for violence, the assumed readiness to command, the mirroring glance of empathy; all the elements that went to make up an image of a man that men would die for and women would fall for.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“Analysis, the International’s online theoretical journal. (Its contributors had nicknamed it Dialysis, because of its insistent theme that everything was going down the tubes.)”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“The economy can get along fine without a commissar for a while,’ Andrei said. ‘The free market, don’t knock it. It’s all in Ricardo.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“Because I can’t do everything myself,’ Myra told him. ‘Even if I can do every particular thing better than anyone. Division of labour, don’t knock it. It’s all in Ricardo.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“And that was that. Another good materialist gone to ash.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“our childhood memories are as vagrant as our childhood selves, and as elusive; and as capable of innocent, shameless deceit.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“The argument that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it failed to impress most people, convinced as they were that there was no risk whatsoever of history’s more ruinous errors being repeated.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road

“David Reid and Myra Godwin are talking after the funeral of her ex-husband in Alma-Ta. Reid was an old lover of Myra:
"There was still a genuine affection between them, attenuated though it was by the years, exasperated though it was by their antagonism. Reid had neer been a man to let enmity get in the way of friendship.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road