Europe in Autumn Quotes

“what actually made Poles happy was listening to someone telling them what to do, and then doing the exact opposite.”
― Dave Hutchinson, Europe In Autumn

“It crossed his mind, halfway through the third bowl, that the soup might be drugged, but by then it was too late and he considered the possibility of being drugged worth it just to eat this marvellous soup.”
― Dave Hutchinson, Europe In Autumn

“Great stacks of film-star biographies, most of dispiriting thickness.”
― Dave Hutchinson, Europe In Autumn

“but there was one thing not generally appreciated about the paranoid state. It was incredibly labour-intensive. There were simply not enough people to monitor all the cameras. Every shop had one, every bus and train and theatre and public convenience, every street and road and alleyway. Computers with facial recognition and gait recognition and body language recognition could do some of the job, but they were relatively simple to fool, expensive, and times had been hard for decades. It was cheaper to get people to watch the screens. But no nation on Earth had a security service large enough, a police force big enough, to keep an eye on all those live feeds. So it was contracted out. To private security firms all trying to undercut each other. The big stores had their own security men, but they were only interested in people going in and out of the store, not someone just passing by. So instead of a single all-seeing eye London’s seemingly-impregnable surveillance map was actually a patchwork of little territories and jurisdictions, and while they all had, by law, to make their footage available to the forces of law and order, many of the control rooms were actually manned by bored, underpaid, undertrained and badly-motivated immigrants.”
― Dave Hutchinson, Europe In Autumn

“In common with many immature polities, great pains had been taken with the uniform of the Border Guard. They were the work of a Berlin theatrical costumier, and more than a little reminiscent of the uniforms of the Ruritanian officer classes in the Stewart Granger version of The Prisoner Of Zenda.”
― Dave Hutchinson, Europe In Autumn

“In the beginning, Rudi had been terrified that Jan was onto him, but he had come to realise that Jan was one of the world’s worst students of human nature; the manager simply suspected everybody, on the grounds that he was bound to be right some of the time.”
― Dave Hutchinson, Europe In Autumn

“Well have your hair cut,” the cobbler said testily. “You have time to visit a barber? Alter your appearance somehow. No one ever looks exactly like their passport photograph; it makes immigration officers suspicious if they do.”
― Dave Hutchinson, Europe In Autumn

“The Polish government affected not to notice what was obviously a calculated snub. Of course, when the Polish government affected not to notice something it was marked by no-confidence motions, and if that didn’t make any difference it led to mass resignations. And if that didn’t work the entire government would implode. The Prime Minister would attempt to resign, the Sejm would refuse to accept his resignation, things would limp along for a while, then the Communists–sorry, the Social Democrats–would win the subsequent elections. It had been going on for decades. Poles had long since stopped being surprised by the process, though it always elicited astonished articles in magazines like Time/ Stone.”
― Dave Hutchinson, Europe In Autumn

“There was an old saying that the Poles weren’t truly happy unless someone was telling them what to do. Rudi had observed that what actually made Poles happy was listening to someone telling them what to do, and then doing the exact opposite.”
― Dave Hutchinson, Europe In Autumn

“Outwardly, the Municipality had come back to life in rather sprightly fashion. You just had to ignore the all pervading air of criminality.”
― Dave Hutchinson, Europe In Autumn

“He did have some small advantage, though. He knew the truth about surveillance. Ever since the dawn of GWOT the nations of the West – apart from the United States, where civil libertarians tended to carry rifles and use them on closed-circuit cameras as an expression of their freedoms – had put their faith in creating a paranoid state, one where every move of every citizen was recorded and logged and filmed and fuck you, if you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to worry about.
Whether this had had any great influence in the course of GWOT was a moot point, but there was one thing not generally appreciated about the paranoid state. It was incredibly labour-intensive.
There were simply not enough people to monitor all the cameras. Every shop had one, every bus and train and theatre and public convenience, every street and road and alleyway. Computers with facial recognition and gait recognition and body language recognition could do some of the job, but they were relatively simple to fool, expensive, and times had been hard for decades. It was cheaper to get people to watch the screens. But no nation on Earth had a security service large enough, a police force big enough, to keep an eye on all those live feeds. So it was contracted out. To private security firms all trying to undercut each other. The big stores had their own security men, but they were only interested in people going in and out of the store, not someone just passing by. So instead of a single all-seeing eye London’s seemingly-impregnable surveillance map was actually a patchwork of little territories and jurisdictions, and while they all had, by law, to make their footage available to the forces of law and order, many of the control rooms were actually manned by bored, underpaid, undertrained and badly-motivated immigrants.”
― Dave Hutchinson, Europe in Autumn

“A colossal amorphous murmuration of starlings surged and darted across the darkening topaz sky.”
― Dave Hutchinson, Europe In Autumn

“London, he had decided, was a mad place, very much of itself, entirely unique. He thought he liked it.”
― Dave Hutchinson, Europe In Autumn