Infernal Devices Quotes

“There are two things without limit – the stupidity of Man and the mercy of God.”
― K.W. Jeter, Infernal Devices

“What is the future going to be like, then?'

'Hey, it's gonna be a gas,' Scape assured me. 'If you're into machines and stuff - like I am - you'd go for it. People are gonna have all kinds of shit. Do whatever they want with it. That's why it didn't faze me when ol' Bendray first told me about wanting to blow up the world. Hey - in the Future, everybody will want to!”
― K.W. Jeter, Infernal Devices

“And if I were to open you up - would you see anything less remarkable? Less intricately dazzling, in its squelching, spongy way? Lungs and heart and spleen, and all the rest - ticking away, as it were? Yet you walk down the boulevard, and pass any number of such wonderful devices, all ticking away as they walk, and think it no great marvel.”
― K.W. Jeter, Infernal Devices

“Tut, tut. We can't let mere sentiment intrude. This is Science.”
― K.W. Jeter, Infernal Devices

“He turned away from me, the better to hide the exclamation of annoyance which he muttered under his breath; I caught only what seemed to be the syllable cog (perhaps a reference to my mechanical trade) and the word succour (a prayer for divine assistance?).”
― K.W. Jeter, Infernal Devices

“Creff, my factotum, interrupted the breakfast he had brought me only a few minutes earlier and announced that a crazed Ethiope was at the door, presumably to buy a watch.”
― K.W. Jeter, Infernal Devices

“All men, reaching back to Adam in the Garden, plead Ignorance as their defence; when, if we were but honest, we would admit that the apple was hedged with every warning imaginable. So I too fell; perhaps all sins are not causes but effects, being the result of that first sin, Boredom.”
― K.W. Jeter, Infernal Devices

“Distruggere qualcosa è il modo migliore d'imparare.”
― K.W. Jeter, Infernal Devices

“To retrieve the past is no great effort, when the events to be recalled are so firmly imprinted on the mind. It is existence in the present, the bleak wreckage and residue of what has gone before, that is so burdensome.”
― K.W. Jeter, Infernal Devices

“Sextants that divided the sky into angles not found in the usual geometries, microscopes whose hermetically sealed lenses distorted the viewed object into shimmering rainbow images, other instruments whose complexity and manifold adjustments quite overwhelmed my powers of speculation as to their use”
― K.W. Jeter, Infernal Devices

“I beg you to read no further.”
― K.W. Jeter, Infernal Devices

“It was the dog Abel, who - as animals have been reported to do - had made his way over all England's hills and rivers, to return to that home where he was first kindly treated. The warm fire, by which he sleeps even now, and the fattening dish will be his rewards to the end of his days.”
― K.W. Jeter, Infernal Devices

“Though I myself have come to this safe harbour – if safety can be found in this life – yet I mourn my former simple days. I have lost my Innocence, in more ways than one. I have seen the gears and furious machinery of the world that lies unreckoned beneath our feet. No longer can I note, as other men do, the passing hours upon the heavens' gilded face, without a vision of a hidden master-spring uncoiling to its final silence. I await the day when all clocks shall stop, including the one that ticks within my breast. Do thou the same, Reader, and profit from my example.”
― K.W. Jeter, Infernal Devices