Doctor Who Quotes

“Save perhaps for the inventing and scriptwriting of Armitage, for the comics publication Judge Dredd the Megazine, in which he delineated and developed the city of London in that futuristic and somewhat casually violent shared world. And possibly his novels in the Judge Dredd line from Virgin Books, being Deathmasques, The Medusa Seed and Wetworks. And possibly any amount of other comics-related material to boot. And his work for Virgin Books’ New Adventure and Missing Adventure lines, come to think of it, including Sky Pirates!, Death and Diplomacy, Burning Heart, and for their continuation (starring one-time companion Bernice Summerfield), Ship of Fools, Oblivion, The Mary-Sue Extrusion and Return to the Fractured Planet. Each and every one a fine and puissant piece of literature, so all in all it is a bit unfortunate that at least half of them are no longer in print. For the BBC he has written the novel Heart of TARDIS, the short story Moon Graffiti, subsequently released as one half of a BBC Radio Collection audio disc, and the very volume you currently hold, quite lovingly, in your hands. His work on Bernice, incidentally, continues more-or-less simultaneously with the release of the Big Finish novel The Infernal Nexus. Mr.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“D AVE STONE is a notorious and unconscionably indolent slug-a-bed with little or no achievement of merit to his name.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“Once, in the time when musical recordings were commonly sold on vinyl, an advertising agency decided to market some product or other by way of a 45-r.p.m. single cover-mounted on a magazine. This being an advertising agency, of course, the first point of business was that they all sit around in a room and discuss what colour it should be.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“To get a feel for these perambulations, one should simply imagine the bustle of the palace kitchens, say, or a bathing chamber in which a number of servants are taking some brief measure of respite from their duties. Then the Doctor and his friends run through, much to the consternation and momentary chaos of all concerned. Repeat as many times as you feel is really necessary.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“Just feeling a little out of place, Doctor,’ said Jamon. ‘Indeed, some small part of me wonders if I’ll ever be in place. Well, not actually a place as such, but you’ll understand what I mean. Traveller is what I am, my place being forever that of a stranger on any world, in my own small way – but with the Engines of the Empire being destroyed as we speak, that life is no more.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“You’ve left things better than you found them, and that’s pretty much all that anybody can hope for.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“And then things happened quickly. Too quickly, on so many wildly differing scales, for any single observer ever to fully comprehend them. And not necessarily in the entirely correct order, besides. . . In”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“None of this is real.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“Take cover!’ the Doctor shouted frantically. He looked wildly about himself, realised that there was nothing in the Chamber of Souls actually to take cover under or behind, and shouted again: ‘Get out! Get out!’ Fitz”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“One of the problems with travelling in the TARDIS, no matter what state of repair it might ultimately be in, is that you can leave a place of sweltering heat to find yourself in bitter cold, and you always seem to have put on the wrong clothes for it.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“Are you all right?’ Fitz had asked him. ‘I mean, it’s not just that you’re going mad on us, it’s like you’re going mad on us in different ways, like different people are doing it. .”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“the Doctor said, as if he hadn’t heard, ‘but the fact remains that if we attempt to push things too far we might end up disappearing up our own singularity and, probably, take this entire section of the universe with us. And I think we’ve all had quite enough of that for a while.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“look at me,’ said Fitz. ‘You lost me somewhere around “substructive”. Is that actually a word?”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“All of which is to the purpose that I have travelled more than most, by means that provoke looks of askance at the merest telling of them,”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“Several other curtains swept back to reveal a number of battered but patently alive, angry and considerably reinforced bandsmen. Reinforced in numbers, that is, and in the general strength of the weaponry they carried such as rapid-fire harmoniums, maraca-grenades and tuba-bazookas. ‘You”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“He didn’t seem out of breath in the slightest. ‘I had this flash of insight into how I could modify the iterations of the immediate probability space. It’s like that game children play where they set up a complicated arrangement of. . . ’ He frowned. ‘You know, those little plaques with spots on them that you play a game with. Just don’t expect me to be able to do it on demand. Or ever again, it seems. Oh, well.’ Behind”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“The chaos of events in the Inner Court still raged in her mind, like one of those fever dreams where image upon disjointed image pile up before the mind’s eye in a nauseating, strobing mass that doesn’t even have the saving grace of dream logic.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“Now, as to what he’s doing, let me say that the Doctor is at practice of the art of, ah, Pratantimancy – a discipline, you know, of his people.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“Oh what foul traitor in your midst could have called such a pestilence down upon the very, er, Shakrathly presence of his own beloved Emperor! For shame!”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“Well, this is all very Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom,’ said the Doctor. ‘It reminds me of the Court of Caligula on the days when they let school parties in.’ ‘You”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“So what happened to the Emperor, then?’ said the Doctor, in the tones of one knowing very well what had happened to the Emperor, and indeed Emperors.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“And I have to tell you,’ he continued a little worriedly, ‘that the tales of its barbarous and primitive manners are myriad. We are in a savage place here – Doctor, was it? – a place of infamy and the fecund darkness of the death of gentility. . .”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“It must have been quite terrible for you, my dear,’ I said, giving her a companionable and comforting pat on the head.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“There was a vaguely battered look to the outside of the TARDIS herself, but she seemed basically whole and intact. The main door (which the Doctor could quite distinctly remember not closing, being far more interested in putting some distance between himself and his young companions and the assortment of monstrous creatures spilling out of it) was now firmly shut, with the sense that it would take rather more than simple cajolery for it ever to open again.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“For a moment he considered making a break for it – but in the end it is physically impossible for something the size and shape of a human to go up a spiral staircase over a certain speed. Besides, he had no idea what might be at the top – and he could instantly think of seven thousand, four hundred and thirty-two things that might be simply and instantly lethal.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“In more than one case I saw a glockenspiel fully half the length again of the bandsman carrying it – although the particular offensive capabilities of such an instrument were at that time well nigh impossible to guess. For”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“from the barracks burst bandsmen in their hundreds. Each was armed, as I had seen before, but now some were quite more armed than others.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“If they get in here, what sort of damage can they do?’ Anji looked at the seriously malfunctioning console and wondered what additional damage might be possible at this point. ‘Oh, if they start monkeying with the primary systems, here in the vortex, that might trigger an interstitial singularity that could suck the entire universe into oblivion like bathwater down a plughole,’ said the Doctor. ‘On the other hand, they might just wreck the controls utterly, leaving us stranded with no way of ever getting home. Of course, since they’ll no doubt tear us limb from limb in the first place, that’ll be the least of our problems.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“Of course, discretion being the better part of valour, for the moment we might be better off heroically running away.’ A”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire

“That was when I knew him before, you understand, when he could just pull stuff like that out of his, uh, hat.”
― Dave Stone, The Slow Empire