Lords of Uncreation Quotes

“This is fucked up,” Olli sent to Kit. “There is no further up to which it might be fucked,” was his considered reply.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“We have a situation down here.' 'Situations are also being had here,' Kit told her.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“The vengeance of the Razor and the Hook shall not be circumscribed in time and space. When moment comes to lay waste to its foe th'Unspeakable shall never stay its hand.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“Olian Timo was harder to get rid of than a venereal disease working for the Hugh tax office.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“once you start doing terrible things because you had no choice, then next time round you do terrible things because you want to, and the precedent is set. This is a terrible thing we are doing through choice.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“Space was, as the saying went, very big.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“Aklu’s doing a thing.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“Hesitant, broken sentences strung together by a cartilage of ellipses and question marks.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“He tumbled, clipped, out of control. Panicked, but then his whole life had been a kind of panic.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“prêt a combattre!” Getting the stress and pronunciation utterly wrong, but somehow imbuing the words with all that solid, burly purpose the Parthenon could always muster. A pause, and then: “Prêt, Mother.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“We bring the burning sword to them!”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“at some point, the necessity of doing bad things for a good cause became, by the inexorable ratchet of cognitive dissonance, the insistence that doing things the bad way was a virtue in itself. Because otherwise how could one justify all the bad things already done?”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“She'd seen big red stars and blue-white stars, yellow friendly stars and one sullen ancient ember that barely qualified for the name. There had been planets that were rocks, and some that were balls of ice, and one that has been hosting a thriving biosphere of eye-offending green. Maybe there were even creatures down there who might look up at the sky and speculate about life elsewhere, but since this whole system was cut off from the Throughways, and Olli didn’t have the time to go say, ‘Hi,’ nobody would ever know.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“The rapid flickering of his mandibles eloquently conveyed exasperation, as his translator said, 'You will get no better than this. You would prefer I not humour you? I am being a friend. No charge.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“Havaer wasn't sure what to expect. He only knew Hivers from where they were interacting with humans, after all. Perhaps the whole place would be seething with loose bugs?

The whole place was seething with loose bugs.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“there was just an empty place in the universe where those terms echoed and were lost, and she knew that they’d missed one name off the funeral list after all...”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“A lack of answer breeds a lack of confidence,”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“Humanity had always imagined itself the centre of the universe. Not all sentient species did, but it had been a human trait since they’d been half ape, inventing all-powerful gods just so they could believe the universe cared about them. Right now, the universe did care about them. Humanity was suddenly the absolute focus of the universe and the universe really, really hated it.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“Because it’s wrong to strive against the way the universe is made. The Essiel do not prey upon the lesser, nor rebel against the great. They know their place, as masters of those things they hold to, and that act on their behalf. When comes the fire, the tide, the storm, they have their shells. That is the way. Except there’s no perfection in this world, hence there must be exception made. Hence those who cannot live within their bounds are yet made use of. If railing against fate is wrong, let us do wrong. Let us do all the acts unspeakable. Break all the laws. Fight that which must be borne. Be wicked, know no grace. Refuse all walls. And so, though we be cursed, reviled, denied, so we yet serve the way that we have left behind. When comes the threat the shell cannot resist, there shall it find us, waiting.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“He’d stand at the shoulders of the historians to make sure they got it right.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“Of course that was impossible, but Olli wasn’t entirely sure she’d been using the word correctly in her life to date.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“Andecka and Grave were not warriors, in that moment. They were petitioners. All they had was begging. Their only weapon was empathy. While extreme military resistance had, on two known occasions, resulted in an Architect’s physical destruction, empathy had saved more worlds by far.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“Humanity had always imagined itself the centre of the universe. Not all sentient species did, but it had been a human trait since they’d been half ape, inventing all-powerful gods just so they could believe the universe cared about them.
Right now, the universe did care about them. Humanity was suddenly the absolute focus of the universe and the universe really, really hated it.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“It’s there, I know it is. Deep, deep down in a place where directions were arbitrary. Or… not entirely. There was one inalienable axis in unspace, and it was down or just away from the real. And it was an axis with a far pole. You could only go so far down that inexorable gradient. Until you reached… Them…”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“He was the human candle that somehow burned twice as brightly, but never burned out. And burning hurt, she knew that. She’d felt the heat of it, but she reckoned Idris was on fire all the time.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“Then she thought she’d got it. They were, indeed, seen. The enemy, a tyranny that operated at a universal scale, had been forced to give them this bespoke fate. They were not just another civilization to be ground to dust without even registering. They had mattered, even if it ended here.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“Shouldn’t you be helping them?” He pointed at himself and then them. “Scientist. Engineers. The time for theory is past, alas.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“She suddenly found she was surprisingly angry. The familiar anger a good lawyer always fought down, because losing your cool and losing your case were frequently close cousins. It was the fury at an opposing advocate for not playing fair, or a biased judge, or a witness you knew was lying. And so, when she spoke to the thing, it was with the most immaculate politeness possible.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“Being down the well was easier. Here the threats were existential, over her pay grade. The problems were past her ability to think about. Up in the real, the situation was just unthinkable.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation

“But all the terrible things they’d done to him during the war had served to make him as adapted as a human could possibly be to this grotesquely inhospitable place.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation