Air Quotes

“He might as well have been talking English, for all Mae understood him.”
― Geoff Ryman, Air

“Once there was a dictator. He drove millions to various kinds of deaths, by war, in prison, or simply in harsh deserts farming their lives away. He destroyed temples, burned books, and ruined the art of calligraphy. He wrote terrible poetry and forced everyone to learn it, so destroying the literary taste of one quarter of humanity. He remained a warrior even as Chairman. He was at his best as a warrior, because as a warrior, he was fighting for his people, dreaming for them. After that, he only ground them down. But I forgive him for saying one beautiful thing:

'Women hold up half the sky.' -- Chairman Mao Tse Tung”
― Geoff Ryman, Air

“She thought she was brave, but she did not have that kind of courage. To face the men who controlled the torturers, the lists, the surveillance, and say: I am going to do the very thing you say I must not do.

And yet they were right.How were things to get better if no one fought?”
― Geoff Ryman, Air

“Heaven is a place where you cannot change and nothing can ever happen, so the things you love are always eternal. Hell is exactly the same.”
― Geoff Ryman, Air