Eyes of the Void Quotes

“The Greater Good morphed into self-interest so easily; human history was full of it.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“What was the use of a mad scientist if they suddenly decided to start making sane decisions?”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“Olli felt she’d seen enough shit for one day, but then the abiding lesson of the universe was there was always more shit.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“Kittering looked up from the display. ‘I am mistaken as a spokesman for an entire species. Very non-cosmopolitan.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“The soldier within her was urging her to just kill them. Gun them down, if the physics would even let her. Or keep them up there, closer to where the death was. But she'd been among civilians and Colonials a long time. Also, she'd been taught to think that the Parthenon were the right and the good. And rather than that meaning they got to do what they liked, and their actions would be whitewashed as right and good because of who they were, it meant they had to actually do right and good things. Active virtue, defending humanity and never, ever giving in to the temptation that Doctor Parsefer had strewn in their path when she'd cooked up her perfect vat-born warrior angels. If these angels were ever to fall, we would be such a force for evil in the universe. It was a terrible thing to look into the heart of your culture and know that you were intended for monstrosity and only an active devotion to the good of others would keep you from it, even when those others hated you.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“Also, she’d been taught to think that the Parthenon were the right and the good. And rather than that meaning they got to do what they liked, and their actions would be whitewashed as right and good because of who they were, it meant they had to actually do right and good things.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“Yes, the universe was built on a certain common logic that could be expressed by numbers, but those numbers themselves were an arbitrary construct that was culturally specific.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“Does any entity really know what it would risk oblivion for, until the moment has arrived?”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“Bring it, she thought. Things were about to get litigious.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“I have been in the world too long, because I have generated new maudlinity routines. I am sorry to inflict them on you.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“Everything ok?"
"Fine, fine, I just... can't. With all the..." He waved his hand to indicate the majority of the universe. "I'm sorry.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“The conspiracy theorist’s dream, the cabal of the mighty getting together to obliterate the bulk of humanity just so they could be kings of what remained”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“If these angels were ever to fall, we would be such a force for evil in the universe. It was a terrible thing to look into the heart of your culture and know that you were intended for monstrosity and only an active devotion to the good of others would keep you from it, even when those others hated you.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“It’s amazing how someone can support your culture and ways absolutely up until the point you ask her to actually live by them.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“It was a terrible thing to look into the heart of your culture and know that you were intended for monstrosity and only an active devotion to the good of others would keep you from it, even when those others hated you.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“And then they had left the tortured world behind and it was just him, alone in an empty temple. Him and unspace, and the thing they always said couldn’t really live there, but did.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“they had seamlessly transitioned from trying to prepare for the worst to looking forward to it. And from there to actively trying to bring it about.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“She reckoned it was a stress response, clutching at a group identity in response to both the influx of newcomers and the threat of utter extinction”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“[...] tutto dipendeva dal niente e da com'era disposto. Il che significava che non c'erano affatto mura, se solo si riusciva a piegare nel modo giusto i pezzi di niente. Potevi prendere una nave e renderla un sogno e poi lanciare quel sogno nell'universo e renderlo reale di nuovo intorno a un'altra stella.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“Sometimes he spent whole unsleeping nights not thinking about it.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“he had new blood. It felt just like the old blood.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“Ah, what games we played in the far-off days of our youth.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“You could take a vessel and make it a dream, and then throw that dream across the universe and make it real again around another star.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“She'd go tooth and nail, try to get his knife out of that fiddly buttoned-down scabbard, bite his nose off, something. Because she reckoned he was the sort of man who enjoyed beating people who couldn't fight back, and she wanted to make it clear she wasn't in that category.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void

“Very little of these circumstances make me happy," Kittering told her sourly. "Do not make me mourn you.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eyes of the Void