S.L. Huang > Quotes

“I'll thank you to talk to me like the heavily armed person I am.”
― S.L. Huang, Zero Sum Game

“Stop being accurate when I’m trying to be dramatic,” Checker groused.”
― S.L. Huang, Zero Sum Game

“I’ve never been very good at being … unsure.” “How do you learn anything new, then?”
― S.L. Huang, The Water Outlaws

“Lu Da wished to eat her way deliciously toward becoming an immortal, and she couldn’t fathom any problem with that.”
― S.L. Huang, The Water Outlaws

“Hey, I wonder what the public would say if they knew two queer scientists were the ones trying to explain human sexuality to the much-romanticized atargati. There’s something else they’ll probably leave out of the book.”
― S.L. Huang, The Little Homo Sapiens Scientist

“She hadn’t wanted to admit that injustice was anything more than a rarity, the sad result only when a thousand turns of luck all landed wrong. How could it be the usual way of things? How could civilization be rotten to its core and still function?”
― S.L. Huang, The Water Outlaws

“Cas,” said Rio, “she had logical arguments for you because you respond to logical arguments.” I was confused. “What other type would someone respond to?” “It’s clear you don’t often converse with other people,” said Rio with a hint of irony.”
― S.L. Huang, Zero Sum Game

“Half the time I thought I was awake but then realized reality wasn’t Hausdorff, and what kind of topology was I in anyway if Twinkies were allowed?”
― S.L. Huang, Zero Sum Game

“What is a dream, but a reality invented by the mind?”
― S.L. Huang, The Water Outlaws

“Cas Russell, not that I'm scorning your recommendation or anything, but you'll forgive me if I think you're FRAKKING INSANE," he hissed.

"You probably shouldn't antagonize me, then," I said, very mildly.”
― S.L. Huang

“Isn’t she a trifle young for a firearm?” said my mother. “Too young? Ha. Seven is almost too old,” said Auntie Rosa.”
― S.L. Huang, Hunting Monsters

“Rio, I know how to take down Pithica.” “How?” asked Rio. My lips twisted into a feral smile. “By using math.”
― S.L. Huang, Zero Sum Game

“Wait, you remember where you keep your stashes with equations?” he’d demanded incred-
ulously when I started giving him directions.
“It’s easier than memorizing them,” I tried to explain, but he just shook his head at me and de-
parted with the list.”
― S.L. Huang, Zero Sum Game

“Why can’t what we’re doing be a little bit wrong but also be right? It’s not like life is black-and-white. I know you guys think I’m naïve on a lot of this stuff, and I know I am—but you two are trying to draw lines where there just, there aren’t any. You’re so invested in what’s right or wrong always making some sort of nice logical sense, but real life is, it’s messy, and sometimes you can’t draw nice perfect boxes around it and know what to do.” She hunched her shoulders. “Bullshit,”
― S.L. Huang, Null Set

“Language is unpaired. It will not match like a converted measurement. Only clouds of overlapping colored meaning that, in their shifting, might briefly end up combining to form almost the same hue as a word or phrase or gesture or semantic unit in the other language.”
― S.L. Huang, The Language of Liars

“but given the darkness, the distance, and the fact that I’d killed most of them, they probably only had the vaguest description of me: short and brown and deadly. That”
― S.L. Huang, Plastic Smile

“Then she fell. Slid off that quicksilver blade to become a motionless lump on the ground.”
― S.L. Huang, The Water Outlaws

“So what's the problem? The Vela sweeps into the Inner Ring, you stage a few parades on Khayyam celebrating that we saved the last of their world. What's not to love?"

His face twisted. "It's gone missing."

"Oh," Asala said. "I suppose that does make a parade harder.”
― S.L. Huang, The Vela

“my headache finally dissipating as the mathematics rose in ghostly shadows,”
― S.L. Huang, Zero Sum Game

“Ms. Russell,” said Dawna delicately, “I am not sure you are fully aware of Mr. Sonrio’s skills.
His ability to be effective—it borders on the unrealistic. He has destroyed entire governments. Lev-
eled armies. Found and obliterated terrorist cells the intelligence agencies of several continents
were chasing their tails trying to pursue. He has altered the course of nations. A lone man.” Her
voice was calm, factual, and very serious.
Huh. So that was what Rio did in his spare time. I’d had no idea he was that impressive. I’m not
going to lie: I was jealous.”
― S.L. Huang, Zero Sum Game

“My hands tightened on the pieces. I had to be able to do this. This was my superpower. My realm. Except that I was a mathematician, not an engineer.”
― S.L. Huang, Null Set

“My final words rang in the air between us, echoing in the space between trust and history.”
― S.L. Huang, Zero Sum Game

“she and I did have basically orthogonal skill sets.”
― S.L. Huang, Critical Point

“Holy crap. They couldn’t control Rio. They couldn’t control Rio! Note to self: To avoid being vulnerable to telepathy, become a psychopath. No, bad plan, Cas.”
― S.L. Huang, Zero Sum Game

“Cas. It is much more difficult to apply logic to morality than you sometimes believe it to be.”
― S.L. Huang, Zero Sum Game

“I had no parents at all, and I am nothing but excellent.”
― S.L. Huang, The Water Outlaws