Alastair Reynolds

"Given the evidence at our disposal, only a fool would put any faith in the organic and the machine living harmoniously for the rest of time."

"Is this a personal grudge or are you just psychotic?"

"They had been in love, desperately in love, but the universe cared nothing for the vicissitudes of the human heart."

"They’re your children. The more you try to force them to be like you, the more they’re going to flare off in different directions like wild fireworks, the more they’re going to surprise and disappoint…"

"People lived and died and did strange, pointless things to themselves. So did societies, be they city-sized states or galactic empires encompassing thousands of solar systems. Everything came and went…"

"If my years as a shatterling had taught me anything, it was that not all questions had answers. Societies had reduced themselves to radioactive dust because they could not accept that single unpalatab…"

"Clavain had been a soldier. He had killed more people than he could remember, even though those days had been a long time ago. It was really a lot less difficult to do when you had a cause to believe …"

"Volyova did not like planets at the best of times, and gas giants struck her as an unreasonable affront to human scale and frailty. In that respect, they were almost as bad as stars."