Ken MacLeod

"It’s a big coincidence. It’s something we can’t explain. But as far as we know that’s all it is. And if it isn’t, we’ll only find out by discovering more facts, not speculating, no matter how logical …"

"All life is a struggle for existence. Why should it cease to be a struggle if it spreads among the stars?"

"If you, dear reader, are looking a this across some great gulf of time and increase of knowledge, spare me your condescension. You too were young once, and ignorant once, and from a future standpoint—…"

"I can’t really imagine war. I can imagine having to fight some swarm of zombie machines or snarling horde of posthuman fast-burn wreckage or whatever, but not two or more actual human societies actual…"

"Falling in love indicated that your genes were complementary to those of the loved one. It told you nothing about when your personalities and sexualities were compatible."

": "It shows them as weak, alienated individuals being recruited by the classic methods of any campus cult. Young men without a strong sense of self are a Microsoft for mind viruses, and these were no …"

"For us scientists, on the other wing, life is not quite so simple. Because we learn the unknown. Unlike, hah-hah, our esteemed friends the philosophers, who learn the unknowable."

"… a faded black T-shirt with a soaring penguin and the slogan 'Where do you want to come from today?'" – Newton's Wake"