The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014 Quotes

“Rosella screams, a short, high-pitched yelp as the Pedestrian starts tearing at her clothes. It is what he must do, as the Pedestrian, and Rosella must squeal and weep and eventually succumb to the desire his rough hands awaken in her, because deep down every woman hides a dream of being ravished by strange men.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“After exploring the Life-Rock for a day (“If you’ve seen one rock, you’ve seen them all”—Oud), his narrative ends two days into the return journey back to Tharsis.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“(On Earth, when anthropologists can’t find instant meaning in any cultural artifact, they say “This obviously had deep religious significance.”)”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“It’s like spending millions of dollars on shark patrols. In Utah.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“Which was briefly reassuring, until some biomedical statistician from the University of fucking Buzzkill went on record about the myth of the perfect failsafe,”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“I would miss him. He always made so little sense.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“Caught-heart, always present, never here, the outlandish and unsatisfying, while always promising satisfaction never-failed-or-fulfilled-quest.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“Remember how once, just once, you scored the best dope in the world? Remember how you smoked till your mouth and your throat were all sandpaper and your lungs thought you’d gone down on a fireplace? Remember how you put on your headphones—took three tries, didn’t it?—and cranked Dark Side of the Moon or “The Ride of the Valkyries” or whatever most got you off all the way up to eleven, man? Remember what it was like?”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“Politics was for those who had too much to eat.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“Realgar was an orange pigment made out of arsenic that they stopped using because it was toxic. Vermilion was made of mercury, verdigris from a toxic copper compound. Ivory black was burned ivory, India yellow came from the urine of cows fed mango leaves, which, from what the kid could dig up, was bad for them. Smalt was just a blue that was hard to make.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“But alpacas don’t lay eggs!”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“My eyebrows went past my hairline. In fact, I have not located them since. I think they are hiding behind my ears.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“You think there can be love without suffering? Having without losing?”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“You may have heard of the one called Chute, on Mars, who wrote a novel called Waste, a metaphysical detective novel about the nature of life and waste that featured Smeg, the detective.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“For a time she had tried religion. It came in capsules, little doses of Crucifixation, sold on the streets of the old neighborhood of Central Station.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“Life is a series of moments forever sliding out of your grasp.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“I had three ribs stoved in once in Outremer, so I knew what was going on. I recognised the sound, and the particular sort of pain, and the not quite being able to breathe. Mostly I remember thinking: it won’t hurt, because any moment now I’ll be dead. Bizarrely reassuring, as if I was cheating, getting away with it. Cheating twice; once by staying alive, once by dying. This man is morally bankrupt.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“When I was in Outremer, I got shot in the face with an arrow. Should’ve killed me instantly; but by some miracle it hung up in my cheekbone, and an enemy doctor we’d captured the day before yanked it out with a pair of tongs. You should be dead, they said to me, like I’d deliberately cheated. No moral fibre.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“He didn’t sit. He rarely sat. Big hands massaging the back of his chair, he looked as if he was keeping the furniture from jumping off the floor. The smile enjoyed itself for another moment while smart eyes read every face. Then he decided that things weren’t stirred up enough, so with a big voice accustomed to commanding billions of dollars, he told all of us, “I’ll be dead before New Year’s.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“Imulai Mokarengen has four great archives, one for each compass point. The greatest of them is the South Archive, with its windows the color of regret and walls where vines trace out spirals like those of particles in cloud chambers.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014