Shards of Earth Quotes

“The problem with judgement calls is that they’re only ever good or bad in retrospect.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“My children, let us not do that again. I, for one, am too old for shit even vaguely related to that.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“Useless, surely. Might as well rely on thoughts and prayers.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“He felt that familiar, baseline unhappiness of someone who would be judged entirely according to moral decisions made by others.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“Anyone wants out, then get out, no hard feelings. For I am in a mood to do some truly stupid things.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“What’s the point of making better people, if they’re still sad and afraid and lonely?”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“To Havaer, as a professional agent, the thought of the paperwork alone filled him with dread.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“I've heard all the things they say about my people across the Colonies, Idris. Probably they think I'm a monster who'll come and kill their menfolk and make regular humanity a footnote in our triumphal histories, right? Or else we're sex-starved sirens who just need to meet a good man to forswear all our Amazon ways."

"You've seen some mediotypes."

"Executor training means exposure to some weird stuff. I'd rather have stayed a simple myrmidon.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“I guess they train you not to feel things, the scars left behind. In the Parthenon. Rock-hard warrior angels, all that."

"They train us to talk about it. They train us to heal, and not to deny we're in pain. Rock-hard is brittle.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“Perhaps it was survival rather than victory, but sometimes just surviving was your definition of a win.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“That was the problem with associating with criminals. It led to Newtonian espionage. Each action produced an equal and opposite reaction and you couldn’t use without being used in turn.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“everyone was just rushing past, in a hurry not to see any trouble either, in case it was contagious.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“Telling people to go to hell in such a way that they enjoy the trip,” the Hiver supplied. “It’s been a privilege having you on the diplomatic staff.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“They train us to talk about it. They train us to heal”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“In times of stress, have you considered singing happy songs?’ Medvig, as an intelligence distributed across a knot of cyborg roaches, loved highlighting human frailties.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“It”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“Awkward and fumbling and apologetic and, in the long decades after, he got the memory out from time to time and warmed himself by it.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“felt something must be wrong, because people were doing what he wanted and that hadn’t happened to him for a long time. Really? Was it war I was missing all this time? Not helpful.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“Something about her was still too much like staring into the sun, and he was worried that it was because he liked her.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“he’d been so vulnerable and alone. To someone brought up within a culture of self-sufficiency and unity, this had exerted a strange fascination.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“prêt à combattre?” “Pret, Mother.” Ready for combat, ready for anything. An exchange that had so infused Partheni culture that it now covered any confirmation between superior and inferior.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“Away into the void where nobody would ever find them. There was always more void. It was the universe’s greatest resource and you could mine it forever and never run out.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“One of the standard sorts of leechfat in these parts.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“It seemed someone had turned the trouble up to eleven.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“We forgot, Idris thought numbly. We forgot what it was like to be hunted. And I've lived to see it again.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“We forgot, Idris thought numbly. We forgot what it was like to be hunted. An I've lived to see it again.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“At least I had that going for me. Oh, there was saving a planet, killing a god and ending the war. But most of all, I lay within those arms.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“You'd better hope we don't really end up in a war, because we're so screwed with people like you in charge.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“The jungle was like a brain, he thought, but a brain at war with itself, fighting for dominance, neuron against neuron. Feels like my brain, then.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“The scientist in me,' remarked Trine, 'protests against using a once-in-a-lifetime discovery as a defence against gunfire. But not too much.' And they were hurrying themselves inside even as they said it.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth