Absolution Gap Quotes

“if human beings really grasped how synthetic their world was - how much of it was stitched together not from direct perception, but from interpolation, memory, educated guesswork - they would go quietly mad.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap

“To feel oneself so tiny, so fragile, so inherently losable, was at first spiritually crushing. But, by the same token, this realisation was also strangely liberating: if an individual human existence meant so little, if one’s actions were so cosmically irrelevant, then the notion of some absolute moral framework made about as much sense as the universal ether. Measured against the infinite, therefore, people were no more capable of meaningful sin - or meaningful good - than ants, or dust.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap

“She hugged him, then kissed him. Then she was gone. He never saw her again.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap

“It wasn’t always about bravery or some shining inner goodness. It could just as easily be about the position of your name in the alphabet, the chemistry of your blood, or”
― Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap

“She wanted to climb on to the rack herself to wrench one of the pilgrims away from the sight that transfixed them, to rip back the cowl from their helmet, to press her own face against that blank mirror and try to make contact--before it was too late--with whatever fading glimmer of human individuality remained. She wanted to drive a rock into the faceplate, shattering faith in an instant of annihilating decompression.
And yet she knew that her anger was horribly misdirected. She knew that she only loathed and despised these pilgrims because of what what she feared had happened to Harbin. She could not smash the churches, so she desired instead to smash the gentle innocents who were drawn toward them”
― Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap

“We’re all either pilgrims or martyrs. In my experience”
― Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap

“To feel oneself so tiny”
― Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap

“was like being kicked in the groin, except that his groin encompassed his entire body.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap

“Doomsday cults flourished in the damp, inviting loam of fear, like so many black orchids. People spoke of End Times, convinced that they were living through the final days.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap

“When Heckel spoke, his voice emerged from a miniature pipe organ projecting from the top of his helmet. He had to keep making adjustments to knobs in his chest area to stop the voice becoming too shrill or deep.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap

“He knew what he was doing. You probably weren’t meant to die.” “And that makes me lucky? It wasn’t remotely unlucky to end up impaled on a wall in the first place? Just a thought.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap

“A moment later Cruz felt the nerve agent infiltrate her lungs. No one had to tell her it would be fatal.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap

“Qafzeh’s algorithms—if implemented properly on a particular architecture of quantum computer—led to a net heat loss from the local universe. A cryo-arithmetic engine was in essence just a computer, running computational cycles. Unlike ordinary computers, however, it got colder the faster it ran.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap

“When two or more of their lighthuggers met, they would compare and update their respective nomenclature tables. If the first ship had assigned names to a group of worlds and their associated geographical features, and the second ship had no current entries for those bodies, it was usual for the second ship to amend its database with the new names. They might be flagged as provisional, unless a third ship confirmed that they were still unallocated.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap