Ian McDonald > Quotes

“Any AI smart enough to pass a Turing test is smart enough to know to fail it.”
― Ian McDonald, River of Gods

“Fake it may be, lies and deceptions, but this is the world in which we find ourselves, and here we must make our little lives.”
― Ian McDonald, Brasyl

“There's never been a rule of human behavior that hasn't been broken by someone, somewhere, sometime, in some circumstance mundane or spectacular. To be human is to transcend the rules.”
― Ian McDonald, River of Gods

“Nothing tells you that you are not on Earth anymore than exhaling at one price and inhaling at another.”
― Ian McDonald, New Moon

“He's never fought with religion; what is the point of railing against such beauty, such intimate theatre, such chime of eternity? He can treasure it without believing in it.”
― Ian McDonald, The Dervish House

“Water splashes and runs in a film across the glass floor suspended above the mosaics. The Hacı Kadın hamam is a typical post-Union fusion of architectures; Ottoman domes and niches built over some forgotten Byzantine palace, years and decades of trash blinding, gagging, burying the angel-eyed Greek faces in the mosaic floor; century upon century. That haunted face was only exposed to the light again when the builders tore down the cheap apartment blocks and discovered a wonder. But Istanbul is wonder upon wonder, sedimented wonder, metamorphic cross-bedded wonder. You can’t plant a row of beans without turning up some saint or Sufi. At some point every country realizes it must eat its history. Romans ate Greeks, Byzantines ate Romans, Ottomans ate Byzantines, Turks ate Ottomans. The EU eats everything. Again, the splash and run as Ferid Bey scoops warm water in a bronze bowl from the marble basin and pours it over his head.”
― Ian McDonald, The Dervish House

“You collect art: you must know that the miniature artists, at the end of careers spent painting the tiniest, most exacting details that no one would ever look at, would often put their eyes out with needles. Too much beauty, yes, but also too much seeing. They were tired of seeing. The dark was safe and warm and comfortable. Blindness was a gift. I still have seeing to do.”
― Ian McDonald, The Dervish House

“We always thought the robot apocalypse would be fleets of killer drones and war mecha the size of apartment blocks and terminators with red eyes. Not a row of mechanised checkouts in the local Extra and the alco station; online banking; self-driving taxis; an automated triage system in the hospital. One by one, the bots came and replaced us.”
― Ian McDonald, Luna: New Moon

“It is always dangerous when your enemy has a sense of humor. Ask Batman.”
― ian mcdonald

“The sense of power, of human ability, was so strong. Many of the men cried. Men are so easily moved.”
― Ian McDonald, Luna: New Moon

“Mr. Durukan, if God is dead then everything is conspiracy.”
― Ian McDonald, The Dervish House

“Legends should stay legends otherwise they just become history, when the natural course of things is the other way around, from history to legend.”
― Ian McDonald, The Dervish House

“Y al final se queda dormido porque la espera es un dolor sordo y continuo, como un acúfeno del alma.”
― Ian McDonald, Wolf Moon

“We were young and thought we were invincible and we threw ourselves into the gears of history and it ground us up.”
― Ian McDonald, The Dervish House

“I do rather like birds,’ Abdullah Unul says. ‘They’re busy, active little things. They make do. Have you ever thought, if Istanbul were to have an official bird, what would it be? I bet you’d think stork straight away. Maybe a sparrow. Me, the official bird of Istanbul would have to be the seagull. What do you see dancing around the Ramazan lights, what’ s following the ships up and down the Bosphorus, what’s facing into the wind on the rocks down by the water side. The common or garden gull, that’s what. For all those reasons, the seagull for me is Istanbul, but mostly because it practises kleptoparasitism. You may not have heard of that. I’ll explain. It’s a behaviour when one animal takes prey from another that has the job of catching or killing it. In seagulls it’s letting some other bird do all the hard work of catching the fish or a bit of bread and then taking it off them as they’re about to eat it. It’s the reason they’re the success they are. So, I’ll have that Koran. Both parts. To be honest, I’d prefer cash, but I imagine there’s a market for that gadgetry you have out there in Fenerbahçe.”
― Ian McDonald, The Dervish House

“Have you ever looked at a map of our country, Necdet?’ Green Headscarf says. ‘It’s a map of the human mind. We’re split by water over two continents, Europe and Anatolia. We are seven per cent Europe, ninety-three per cent Asia. Conscious Thrace, unconscious, pre-conscious, sub-concious Anatolia. And Istanbul — have you ever seen a neuron, Necdet? A brain cell? The marvel is that the synapses don’t touch. There is always a gap — there must a gap, otherwise consciousness would not exist. The Bosphorus is that synaptic cleft. Potential can flow across the cleft. It’s the cleft that makes consciousness possible.”
― Ian McDonald, The Dervish House

“This is always always always what she wished a bazaar to be. Demre, proudly claiming to be the birthplace of Santa Claus, was direly lacking in workshops of wonder. Small corner stores, an understocked chain supermarket on the permanent edge of bankruptcy and a huge cash and carry that serviced the farms and the hotels squeezed between the plastic sky and the shingle shore. Russians flew there by the charter load to sun themselves and get wrecked on drink. Drip irrigation equipment and imported vodka, a typical Demre combination. But Istanbul; Istanbul was the magic. Away from home, free from the humid claustrophobia of the greenhouses, hectare after hectare after hectare; a speck of dust in the biggest city in Europe, anonymous yet freed by that anonymity to be foolish, to be frivolous and fabulous, to live fantasies. The Grand Bazaar! This was a name of wonder. This was hectare upon hectare of Cathay silk and Tashkent carpets, bolts of damask and muslin, brass and silver and gold and rare spices that would send the air heady. It was merchants and traders and caravan masters; the cornucopia where the Silk Road finally set down its cargoes. The Grand Bazaar of Istanbul was shit and sharks. Overpriced stuff for tourists, shoddy and glittery. Buy buy buy. The Egyptian Market was no different. In that season she went to every old bazaar in Sultanahmet and Beyoğlu. The magic wasn’t there.”
― Ian McDonald, The Dervish House

“Somos tan egocéntricos que nos creemos la medida de todas las cosas, pero el tiempo nos arrebatará todo lo que somos, todo lo que tenemos, todo lo que llegaremos a construir.”
― Ian McDonald, Wolf Moon

“The present is an illusion.”
― Ian McDonald, Luna: New Moon

“Thomas Lull knows he is un-American: he hates cars but loves trains, Indian trains, big trains like a nation on the move. He is content with the contradiction that they are at once hierarchical and democratic, a temporary community brought together for a time; vital while it lasts, burning away like early mist when the terminus is reached.”
― Ian McDonald, River of Gods

“Is this a Kurdish thing?’
‘What?’
‘Being deliberately contradictory?”
― Ian McDonald, The Dervish House

“Bullets are incompatible with pressurised environments and complex machinery.”
― Ian McDonald, Luna: New Moon

“It's the superhero problem . . . .Superpowers make everything personal. Batman versus Joker. Fantastic Four versus Galactus. The Big G might be the Devourer of Worlds, but in the end he's just a dude. Beat him and the problem goes away. But the real problems aren't like that. You can't solve them by hitting them. The real supervillains. . . . were people in suits who met in rooms and decided things. Destroy one and another would take her place”
― Ian McDonald, Empress of the Sun

“Sensitive dependence on initial conditions; one word, one act, can change the world. Well they named it chaos theory.”
― Ian McDonald, Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone

“The might and magic of money is not what it allows you to own; it is what it allows you to be. Money is freedom.”
― Ian McDonald, Luna: New Moon

“The geek of the Earth are a tribe and they are mighty.”
― Ian McDonald, Planesrunner

“It’s one thing building a cloister to reflect the 768 of the numerological Bismillah, it’s another planning a giant alphabet out of an entire city before you’ve even built your first mosque.’
‘It is, but remember, Sinan was chief architect and city planner at the time of the conquest of Cairo. He practised on that city; demolishing and building where he liked. I have no doubt that he was already forming the idea of a sacred geometry. His first building as Architect of the Abode of Felicity was the Haseki Hürrem Mosque for the Kadin Roxelana. Not his greatest work by any means, and he was working from existing designs, but it was identifiable as his first mature work. There’s a story in his autobiography Tezkiretül Bünyan that while he was surveying the site he noticed that children were pulling live fish from a grating in the street. When he went to investigate he discovered an entire Roman cistern down there. Perhaps it was this that inspired him to realize his vision. Hidden water. The never-ceasing stream of Hurufism.”
― Ian McDonald, The Dervish House

“After the plates are removed by the silent and swift waiting staff, General Çiller leans forward and says across the table to Güney, ‘What’s this I’m reading in Hürriyet about Strasbourg breaking up the nation?’
‘It’s not breaking up the nation. It’s a French motion to implement European Regional Directive 8182 which calls for a Kurdish Regional Parliament.’
‘And that’s not breaking up the nation?’ General Çiller throws up his hands in exasperation. He’s a big, square man, the model of the military, but he moves freely and lightly ‘The French prancing all over the legacy of Atatürk? What do you think, Mr Sarioğlu?’
The trap could not be any more obvious but Ayşe sees Adnan straighten his tie, the code for, Trust me, I know what I’m doing,
‘What I think about the legacy of Atatürk, General? Let it go. I don’t care. The age of Atatürk is over.’
Guests stiffen around the table, breath subtly indrawn; social gasps. This is heresy. People have been shot down in the streets of Istanbul for less. Adnan commands every eye.
‘Atatürk was father of the nation, unquestionably. No Atatürk, no Turkey. But, at some point every child has to leave his father. You have to stand on your own two feet and find out if you’re a man. We’re like kids that go on about how great their dads are; my dad’s the strongest, the best wrestler, the fastest driver, the biggest moustache. And when someone squares up to us, or calls us a name or even looks at us squinty, we run back shouting ‘I’ll get my dad, I’ll get my dad!’ At some point; we have to grow up. If you’ll pardon the expression, the balls have to drop. We talk the talk mighty fine: great nation, proud people, global union of the noble Turkic races, all that stuff. There’s no one like us for talking ourselves up. And then the EU says, All right, prove it. The door’s open, in you come; sit down, be one of us. Move out of the family home; move in with the other guys. Step out from the shadow of the Father of the Nation.
‘And do you know what the European Union shows us about ourselves? We’re all those things we say we are. They weren’t lies, they weren’t boasts. We’re good. We’re big. We’re a powerhouse. We’ve got an economy that goes all the way to the South China Sea. We’ve got energy and ideas and talent - look at the stuff that’s coming out of those tin-shed business parks in the nano sector and the synthetic biology start-ups. Turkish. All Turkish. That’s the legacy of Atatürk. It doesn’t matter if the Kurds have their own Parliament or the French make everyone stand in Taksim Square and apologize to the Armenians. We’re the legacy of Atatürk. Turkey is the people. Atatürk’s done his job. He can crumble into dust now. The kid’s come right. The kid’s come very right. That’s why I believe the EU’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us because it’s finally taught us how to be Turks.’
General Çiller beats a fist on the table, sending the cutlery leaping.
‘By God, by God; that’s a bold thing to say but you’re exactly right.”
― Ian McDonald, The Dervish House

“Humans are not made for endless light. Humans need their darknesses.”
― Ian McDonald, New Moon

“A joyful task,’ he says and she realizes that he welcomes the idea of years of searching, tile by tile, inscription by inscription, cornice by cornice and niche by niche, that the painstaking search of Sinan’s greatest achievement, decades long, is the holy task; that the secret letter is cut in every stone and tile. By the time you find it, you have realized the supreme unimportance of finding it. A Sufi lesson.”
― Ian McDonald, The Dervish House