Descent Quotes

“There’s a part of the human brain, the temporal lobe, that is associated with religious experiences as well as with epilepsy.”
― Ken MacLeod, Descent

“The eighties?’ I said. ‘As in, the nineteen-eighties? The decade that taste forgot? Honest, Sophie, ask your granny. Ask mine, if you like. She’ll tell you the only good thing about it was that the internet and phone cameras weren’t invented, well hardly anyway, so most of the awful photos are lying out of sight in drawers and shoeboxes.”
― Ken MacLeod, Descent

“As far as I was concerned, the best thing one could do for the poor was to not add one’s self to their number.”
― Ken MacLeod, Descent

“English is so past,’ she said. ‘Sure, we need people who can write about what we do, but they don’t have to be English graduates. Theology graduates who don’t believe any of it – that would be useful.”
― Ken MacLeod, Descent

“The discretion of the watcher versus the privacy of the watched was just another arms race; this one, I could see, would run and run.”
― Ken MacLeod, Descent

“Kindle, ah,’ said Baxter, ‘takes me back.”
― Ken MacLeod, Descent

“I was overcome by a wave of wonder at how much good was going on, and how you heard about the bad things that happened so much that you overlooked the immensely disproportionate majority of other acts done to the real benefit of self and others without which none of this would be here at all.”
― Ken MacLeod, Descent

“You must rely on reason and science,” she said, “and be guided by a likewise rational ethic of human concern. You must do your utmost as individuals to improve your understanding, ability and compassion.”
― Ken MacLeod, Descent