Kraken Quotes

“Any moment called now is always full of possibles.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“We should have just killed him, that's a lesson, don't get creative with revenge”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“My Google-fu is strong.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“We cannot see the universe. We are in the darkness of a trench, a deep cut, dark water heavier than earth, presences lit by our own blood, little biolumes, heroic and pathetic Promethei too afraid or weak to steal fire but able still to love. Gods are among us and they care nothing and are nothing like us.

This is how we are brave: we worship them anyway.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“Someone came in all Starfleet badges today. Not on my shift, sadly.'

'Fascist,' Leon had said. 'Why are you so prejudiced against nerds?'

'Please,' Billy said. 'That would be a bit self-hating, wouldn't it?'

'Yeah, but you pass. You're like, you're in deep cover,' Leon said. 'You can sneak out of the nerd ghetto and hide the badge and bring back food and clothes and word of the outside world.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“Subby Subby Subby," whispered Goss. "Keep those little bells on your slippers as quiet as you can. Sparklehorse and Starpink have managed to creep out of Apple Palace past all the monkeyfish, but if we're silent as tiny goblins we can surprise them and then all frolic off together in the Meadow of Happy Kites.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“The sea is full of saints. You know that? You know that: you're a big boy.

The sea's full of saints and it's been full of saints for years. Since longer than anything. Saints were there before there were even gods. They were waiting for them, and they're still there now.

Saints eat fish and shellfish. Some of them catch jellyfish and some of them eat rubbish. Some saints eat anything they can find. They hide under rocks; they turn themselves inside out: they spit up spirals. There's nothing saints don't do.

Make this shape with your hands. Like that. Move your fingers. There, you made a saint. Look out, here come another one! Now they're fighting! Yours won.

There aren't any big corkscrew saints anymore, but there are still ones like sacks and ones like coils, and ones like robes with flapping sleeves. What's your favourite saint? I'll tell you mine. But wait a minute, first, do you know what it is makes them all saints? They're all a holy family, they're all cousins. Of each other, and of ... you know what else they're cousins of?

That's right. Of gods.
Alright now. Who was it made you? You know what to say.

Who made you?”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“He knows religion is bollocks," Collingswood said. "He just wishes he didn't.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“Just thugs only ever got so far. The best thugs were all psychologists.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“Fortune-telling was quantum betting, a competitive scrying of variably likely outcomes.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“Art Nouveau was coil-envy.”
― China Miéville , Kraken

“The light was going: some cloud cover arriving, as if summoned by drama.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“I know, I know," Moore said. "Mad beliefs like that, eh? Must be some metaphor, right? Must mean something else?" Shook his head. "What an awfully arrogant thing. What if faiths are exactly what they are? And mean exactly what they say?"
"Stop trying to make sense of it and just listen," Dane said.
"And what," Moore said, "if a large part of the reason they're so tenacious is that they're perfectly accurate?”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“But this was not quite the right kraken apocalypse.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“You got to be worried when they're agreeing about anything," she said. "Prophets. That's the last bloody thing you want prophets to do.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“Virgina Woolf versus Edward Lear."

"Christ Alive," said Billy. "Are those my only choices?"

"I went for Lear," said Leon. "Partly out of fidelity to the letter L. Partly because given the choice between nonsense and boojy wittering you blatantly have to choose nonsense.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“Dane discarded his speargun with visible relief. As a paladin of the Church of God Kraken, he had few options. Like many groups devoid of real power and realpolitik, the church was actually constrained by its aesthetics. Its operatives could not have guns, simply, because guns were not squiddy enough.
It was a common moan. Drunk new soldiers of the Cathedral of the Bees might whine: “It’s not that I don’t think sting-tipped blowpipes aren’t cool, it’s just…” “I’ve gotten rally good with the steam-cudgel,” a disaffected Pistonpunk might ask her elders “but wouldn’t it be useful to…?” Oh for a carbine, devout assassins pined.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“As he got older, Billy suspected, he would, Dicaprio-like, simply become like an increasingly wizened child.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“Death isn't what it used to be”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“Dark came early and stayed full of lights and the shouts of children.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“Of all the skills necessary for her work, what she was perhaps worst at was being polite to inanimate things.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“Just her, three men, a fidgety pig and lawful intent.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“Everything's fit to be worshipped.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“Your job is to get villains. Right? You'll have to know what to do. If you don't know, you have to find out. If you can't find out you bloody well make it up and then you make it so.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“The bullets are gun-eggs,” Collingswood said to Baron, looking at Vardy. Farmers squeezing their holy metal beasts to percussive climax, fertilisation by cordite expulsion, violent ovipositors. Seeking warm places full of nutrients, protecting baby guns deep in the bone cages, until they hatched.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“There was a hubbub in Billy's head all night. He would hardly call so raging and discombobulated a torrent of images a dream. Call it a vomit, call it a gush.

He was back in the water, not braving but frowning, synchronised swimming, not swimming but sinking, toward the godsquid he knew was there, a tentacular fleshscape and the moon-sized eye that he never saw but knew, as if the core of the fucking planet was not searing metal but mollusc, as if what we fall toward when we fall, what the apple was heading for when Newton's head got in the way, was kraken.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“A few mad exaggerations, alright, within a couple of days: swear to fucking god, they were like throwing grenades and pulling out all kinds of crazy knackery, it was out of control. Whatever. As if the story, if big enough, reflected glory on the teller.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“How do you...? What is it you're doing?" he said to Vardy as the man took a breath, mid-insight. What do you call that? Billy thought. That reconstitutitive intelligence, berserker meme-splicing, seeing in nothings first patterns, then correspondence, then causality and dissident sense.

Vardy even smiled. "Paranoid," he said. "Theology.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“Some midnight-of-all or other [apocalypse] was predicted every few days or nights. Most came to nothing, leaving relevant prophets cringing with a unique embarrassment as the sum rose. It was a very particular shame, that of now ex-worshippers avoiding each other's eyes in the unexpected aftermath of 'final' acts -- crimes, admissions, debaucheries and abandon.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“I know your job's to channel the bleeding divine, and when have I ever stood in your way? Aren't I the bloke puts "Do Not Disturb, Eschatology Being Revelationed" on your door? EH? But you're supposed to keep me in the loop, and turn up when I need you, and do me the sheer minimum modicum of salutage and whatnot, right?”
― China Miéville, Kraken