Gareth L. Powell > Quotes

“There are two kinds of courage. There's the kind you get from knowing that what you're doing is right. And there's the kind you get from knowing its hopeless and wrong, and just not giving a damn.”
― Gareth L. Powell, The Last Reef

“We never know when we’re living through the good times. It’s only when everything turns to ashes and crap we realize how fortunate we really were.”
― Gareth L. Powell

“Sometimes the needs of the mission outweigh the requirements of the rulebook,”
― Gareth L. Powell, Embers of War

“Time to blow shit up.”
― Gareth L. Powell, Ack-Ack Macaque

“We saw a dying star being pulled into a black hole. Watched icy comets graze the atmospheres of super-Jovian gas giants. Discovered a matching pair of Earth-like planets locked in an orbital dance around a hot, young star, their oceans seething with the potential for life.”
― Gareth L. Powell, Stars and Bones

“And yet, despite my misgivings, I felt a certain wild joy. I was a heavy cruiser, a machine of death and conflict. Hiding, no matter how pressing the strategic necessity, felt like cowardice. I had done it because I had to; but now I was rising to meet my foe head-on, and I had forgotten how heady and intoxicating it could feel. I was charging the enemy from the depths of a furnace, my hull glowing and my torpedo tubes primed and ready to fire. What could be more glorious?”
― Gareth L. Powell, Embers of War

“We’re in the pipe,” the pilot reported. “Five by five.”
― Gareth L. Powell, Future's Edge

“Upheavals are always hardest on the kind of people who meticulously plan their lives.”
― Gareth L. Powell, Light of Impossible Stars: An Embers of War novel

“As an engine of war, I hadn’t been designed to ponder mortality—only enforce it.”
― Gareth L. Powell, Fleet of Knives

“Philosophy just engineering by another name.”
― Gareth L. Powell, Light of Impossible Stars: An Embers of War Novel

“Hey, you know the old saying: If life gives you lemons, pull a gun on it and say, "Fuckyour lemons, where are the goddamn bananas?”
― Gareth L. Powell, Hive Monkey

“A thin had wind”
― Gareth L. Powell, Descendant Machine

“How strange, I thought, that the human race had once been entirely limited to a solitary and similarly fragile planet. It seemed absurd. How could we have survived such confinement?”
― Gareth L. Powell, Embers of War

“The truth was, we had always been closer to ants and bees than we ever suspected. We just couldn’t see our nests and hives for what they were. We called them nations, armies, political parties, universities, corporations… Non-biological, incorporeal entities able to endure across generations, outliving their original members and accomplishing goals taking more than a single human span to achieve. Goals that, as we saw towards the end of our collective life on Earth, weren’t always in the best interests of the humans themselves.”
― Gareth L. Powell, Stars and Bones

“Things have changed,” he said. “There’s a new monkey in town. Tell your friends.”
― Gareth L. Powell, Ack-Ack Macaque

“Politicians and businessmen are a necessary evil, in so far as they provide the funds to further scientific endeavour. Beyond that, they are at best useless, and at worst a liability.”
― Gareth L. Powell, Descendant Machine

“Once you make a decision,
the universe conspires to
make it happen.” Ralph Waldo Emerson”
― Gareth L. Powell, Descendant Machine

“The question of what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object.”
― Gareth L. Powell, Ack-Ack Macaque

“Her fusion reactor came online, generating power for the jump engines. Deep in her belly, the engines began to spin up until the old ship felt she could leap the length of the universe in a single orgasmic bound.”
― Gareth L. Powell, Macaque Attack!

“Sometimes, the universe operates in ways beyond our ability to fathom. In such cases, I have found the only true wisdom lies not in concerning ourselves with what should be, but rather making the best of what is.”
― Gareth L. Powell, Descendant Machine

“I think you’re all broken in some fundamental way, but you’re not all broken in the same place. And it’s the ways you each find to work around those breaks that make you who you are.”
― Gareth L. Powell, Fleet of Knives

“And here she was on a parallel timeline, in a possibly radioactive dystopia, searching for her best friend—a rude, violent, ungrateful monkey, who smelled like a wet dog and drank like a fish — with only the electronic projection of her dead husband for company.”
― Gareth L. Powell, Macaque Attack!