Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2020 edition Quotes

“Witness, I thought. He wants a witness. All these men with their starched turbans and silver seals want a witness when a woman reports maltreatment. But have her walk the street, head uncovered, and preachers and counselors pour out of rat holes, a hundred recriminations in hand. Have her complain about shabby shoes or threadbare clothes and she’s a squanderer. Have her try to earn a few extra dirhams washing out men’s filth at the bathhouse and she is a harlot.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2020 edition

“This manuscript had been Abbi’s most precious possession, and was now mine. It had a richly illuminated frontispiece and finispiece. All one hundred and fourteen of its surahs were calligraphed in an early Abbasid script and decorated in gold leaf. The four quls were ornamented in gold filigree and the Chapter of Light and Verse of the Throne in silver.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2020 edition

“which means you’ll sit around for a year on couches in basements, watching his band get stoned. He will know two chords, then three. He will know nothing about laundry, nor birth control. All his songs will be about the girl before you, who’ll wear leather pants and also turn”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2020 edition

“Masking or turning off tech built right into the nervous system is actually a lot harder than simply hiring what our German friends call a Fleischgeist. It’s not as snappy in English: meat ghost. But it gives you the idea—someone with no implants. None. No hand chip, no cranial, no optics or aurals. Nothing with an electronic signature. In our day and age, they might as well be invisible. Ergo, the ghost part.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2020 edition

“It’s not the kind of place Quini’s thugs would hang around in, and if they did they would stick out like scowling, vantablack-clad sore thumbs. But it pays to be paranoid in public in this day and age, what with the feds now legally able to hijack phones and implant mics. Ergo, the babelware. If I’m using ergo right.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2020 edition

“You are the divine result of crumpled receipts and pretzel salt, of expired condoms and forgotten phone numbers, of lipstick and longing, of hands opened and spread out, of dogs running and of trucks on the highway, of cheap champagne and of diner coffee, of address books thrown out the window, of paperbacks and of pregnancies, of crow’s feet and of silver streaks in the dark night of your hair.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2020 edition

“You can make it through this. That’s what you’ll whisper when they pray to you, asking for ways to leave their own disasters, asking for methods, begging for the lineage of the living.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2020 edition

“Masking or turning off tech built right into the nervous system is actually a lot harder than simply hiring what our German friends call a Fleischgeist. It’s not as snappy in English: meat ghost.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2020 edition

“She spears the first piece of squid and stuffs it into her mouth. Her eyes flutter shut in momentary ecstasy. You always did find good places to eat, she says, reopening her eyes.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2020 edition