Children of Strife Quotes

“Perhaps sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature?”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Strife

“Because Here be dragons would always be better than Here be nothing.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Strife

“The Stomatopods were forced to endure being considerably more comfortable in space, via the offices of a species who were their cultural devils.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Strife

“No Stomatopod would go into any situation without the ability to kill every single other entity there, just as a matter of courtesy. Honestly, if an opponent arrived with nothing but open hands and a smile, that would be an insult. Cato wishes to be a threat, and be considered a threat, otherwise how can anyone take him seriously?”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Strife

“I always wondered what wild looked like.” Then, after a moment of shared contemplation, “It looks back. I didn’t expect that.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Strife

“He is distantly aware that Humans—or at least lower-case-h humans—are the origin point of all of this. His people, the Portiids, all the rest (with one exception) derive from human science. Having met Humans, he can only assume they lost a great deal over the intervening millennia. They seem a hapless and poorly designed species.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Strife

“It is a peculiar driver of intelligence and complex behaviour”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Strife

“Intelligence is not necessarily a great evolutionary boon. Large brains”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Strife

“In spider parlance, not ‘oral tradition’ of course. A concept more akin to ‘history by foot’.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Strife

“Their long-dead ancestors had wanted their descendants to know that”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Strife

“I was Avrana Kern, says Kern—or not, apparently, Avrana Kern—after a pause.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Strife