John Shirley > Quotes

“No Gods Or Kings. Only Man. -Andrew Ryan”
― John Shirley, BioShock: Rapture

“If the modern world were a patient in my care... I would diagnose it suicidal." - Dr. Sofia Lamb”
― John Shirley, BioShock: Rapture

“A man must make of his life a ladder that he never ceases to climb -- if you're not rising, you are slipping down the rungs, my friend.”
― John Shirley, BioShock: Rapture

“I believe in no God, no invisible man in the sky. But there is something more powerful than each of us, a combination of our efforts, a Great Chain of industry that unites us. But it is only when we struggle in our own interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide. Any man who tells you different either has his hand in your pocket, or a pistol to your neck. —Andrew Ryan”
― John Shirley, BioShock: Rapture

“Some automatic responses are good — they're skills, and we need them for life and labor. But the tendency to accumulate programming tends to have a life of its own — or more accurately, to steal the life that belongs to us.”
― John Shirley, Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas

“On the surface," said the deep voice of Andrew Ryan booming from hidden speakers, "The farmer tills the soil, trading the strength off his arm for a land of his own. But the parasites say, 'No! What is yours is ours! We are the state; we are God; we demand our share!”
― John Shirley, BioShock: Rapture

“Okay; they’ve got to be kids—but why girls?” Fontaine asked. “People are even more protective about little girls.” Tenenbaum winced and turned back to the microscope, muttering, “For some reason girls take sea-slug implant better than boys.” Fontaine wondered what little boy they’d experimented on to determine that and what had become of him. But he didn’t really care. He didn’t. And in fact—there was one place that could supply children for all sorts of things. “So—just girls, eh? That’s okay; that’ll just be fewer bunks in the orphanage.”
― John Shirley, BioShock: Rapture

“from the end of John Shirley's Black Glass, something like: "the Singularity guys don't understand, they aren't copying us, our brains, just the noise we make”
― John Shirley

“So you see, a man's history when other folks tell it is a pitiful confusion.”
― John Shirley, Wyatt in Wichita: A Historical Novel

“The parasite hates three things: free markets, free will, and free men.”
― John Shirley, BioShock: Rapture

“the world of commerce is restless; it’s like a hungry child that keeps growing and never quite grows up”
― John Shirley, BioShock: Rapture

“When you serve a beer-cock an ear.”
― John Shirley, BioShock: Rapture

“Standing at the prow of the pitching deck of the trawler, unscrewing the top of his flask, Frank Fontaine asked himself: Am I after fish—or a wild goose? Sure, he always dreamed about a big-paying long con, but this one was threatening to go on indefinitely—and though it was afternoon and supposedly summer, it was cold as a son of a bitch out here. Made a witch’s tit seem like a hot toddy. Was it worth giving up Gorland—becoming Fontaine? A city under the sea. It was becoming an obsession. Fontaine looked up at the streaming charcoal-colored clouds, wondered if it was going to storm again. Just being on this damn tub was too much like work. Talking to the men who picked up the fish for Rapture’s food supply, Fontaine had confirmed that Ryan had indeed built some gigantic underwater habitat, a kind of free-market utopia—and Fontaine knew what happened with utopias. Look at the Soviets—all those fine words about the proletariat had turned into gulags and breadlines. But a “utopia” was pure opportunity for a man like him. When this undersea utopia fell apart, he’d be there, with a whole society to feast on. Long as he didn’t step too hard on Ryan’s toes, he could build up an organization, get away with a pile of loot. But he had to get down to Rapture first … The trawler lurched, and so did Fontaine’s stomach. A small craft was being lowered over the side of the platform ship—a thirty-foot gig. Men descended”
― John Shirley, BioShock: Rapture

“He liked living simply. And he liked living alone. He had grown to dislike physical affection. It was intrusive, and it bullied his self esteem, because he wasn't good at it.”
― John Shirley, Obsessions

“Almost anyone could be Fascist under the right circumstances. If they get scared enough. It's because, you see, most people live their lives like sleepwalkers. They're not really awake, though they think they are. And sleepwalkers are easily lead. That's why we have to fight so hard. Because it never quite goes away.”
― John Shirley, Eclipse Penumbra

“In the early days he'd felt something like it at Crossworld. There was corporate loyalty, some sense of belonging. But the higher you went in the company, the falser the camaraderie became, and the more you knew that what appeared to cooperation was ambition, was a kind of competition.”
― John Shirley, The Exploded Heart

“But this was Stormland. There was always another front coming remorselessly at the coast. A Category Four was coming from the mid-Atlantic, angling to cross their northward flight path. The Butcher Bird should be turned inland to try to dodge the worst of it. But NoelLeuman had insisted they stay on this course. Leuman was a stormrider.”
― John Shirley, Stormland

“The Amazon forests?” Webb asked, opening the medicine box. He looked at the label, then put a med patch on his arm. “Yes, yes, the forests. Mostly gone, turned into savannah and gold mines and palm oil plantations and beef ranches. Oh yes. The natural moisture pump is gone, don’t you know? Far more moisture gathers out over the sea instead, along with the growing heat, and that increases wind shear. And then . . . then . . . Why, the Gulf Stream weakening as the ice caps melt . . . Of course, that’s a good way north of here but it’s all one system, domino effect of weather cells, do you see . . .” His eyes lost focus; his voice drifted away.”
― John Shirley, Stormland

“unsure of her first estimate of the”
― John Shirley, Broken Rider

“You haven’t been here that long. Just wait. I don’t go for it either, but who’s in charge of Stormland, really? The perpetual storm system is! We crawl around under it hoping it doesn’t stomp us. These people feel like they’ve got to appease it. Easy to get superstitious in all that. Desperate people can go for magical thinking pretty easily, Webb.” After a thoughtful pause, he went on, “A lot of folks around here believe that one day the storms will pass. From what I’ve heard, it might take a century for the cycle to finally stop. The storm system here is—it’s like the red spot on Jupiter, with what we’ve done to the planet. The big storm had to settle somewhere.”
― John Shirley, Stormland

“herd.”
― John Shirley, Red Trail

“What is the difference between a man and a parasite? A man builds. A parasite asks 'Where is my share?' A man creates. A parasite says, 'What will the neighbors think?' A man invents. A parasite says, 'Watch out, or you might tread on the toes of God.”
― John Shirley, Bioshock - Rapture

“Everyone was always in danger, after all. From cancer, from car crashes and plane crashes, from criminals. Most people managed denial; managed to pretend they were safe.”
― John Shirley, Bleak History

“officious”
― John Shirley, BioShock: Rapture

“There were just too many questions; the answers were one more thing being rationed to the survivors ...”
― John Shirley, Eclipse Corona

“It was a bitter thing. You might give up lawing, but some no-account would pop up from the underbrush of the past and shoot you in the back.”
― John Shirley, Wyatt in Wichita: A Historical Novel

“He had know guys all his life who gave him that feeling. Even as a kid. People who were always lying, even when they didn't have to.”
― John Shirley, Crawlers: A Novel

“If the commentator was Christian, he said it fulfilled revelations. The Jews, the Sikhs, the Muslims pointed to other prophecies, the fundamental Christians, anyway, were easily refuted: the Second Coming never came about. They waited and waited for the Judgement; for the angel with the flaming sword, for the Rapture, for the dead rise, but not (now and then the demons raise the dead but not the way Christians expected), for Jesus to come in his glory.
Jesus was a no-show. Naturally, the evangelists rationalized his conspicuous absence: The Sacred Timetable, don’t you know is a little off, that’s all but the most “righteous” of them were eaten alive, a limb at a time, in public no differently than sinners. I remember when the demons rampaged through Oral Roberts University. The sniggering delight that some hipsters and cynics took in the brutal series of blood atrocities was most embarrassing - for the rest of us cynics and hipsters.”
― John Shirley, Demons

“It was largely a land without Borders - something that attracted him and disturbed him both. The land didn't need laws. But the people did.”
― John Shirley, Wyatt in Wichita: A Historical Novel

“The greater the scope in implementing an activity, the greater the need for strict attention to small details.”
― John Shirley, Living Shadows: Stories: New & Preowned