Fraser Simons > Fraser's Quotes

“The finest thing in the world is knowing how to belong to oneself.
Michel de Montaigne”
― Laurie Stevens, The Dark Before Dawn

“The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference - the only difference in their eyes - between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.

Quellcrist Falconer
Things I Should Have Learned by Now, Volume II”
― Richard K. Morgan

“And so Ikne walked away from his idyll and got a job sharpshooting for the Perambuco guerrillas in Salvador. It wasn't an easy life, and one day he got shot in the stomach by a lead bullet. The bullet fell in love with him, of course, but she couldn't stop the slow bleed of his gastric cavity into his pancreas, and she felt terrible, which was too bad, since he'd known all along what would happen.
He died; he always said he would.
Someone had to take out the bullet.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“Balot was gripped by the Doctor's words, not even nodding now. Choice--right. She felt the two words spinning around like hands on a clock, then snapping into position together. A magic moment. Magic that would transport Balot to a different place. In the interior workings of choice and right a number of complicated cogs spun together. The doctor was one of those cogs.”
― Tow Ubukata, Mardock Scramble

“Anger didn't do it justice. It was rage and hurt and grief and something hot enough, brutal enough to melt a man's conscience. Whatever damage I was fighting, he knew his own demons and saw them when he looked at me.
I'd never felt so close to him as I did in that moment.
And I never wanted to beat his head against the table so much.”
― K.C. Alexander, Necrotech

“Thing is you learn a lot in the city; you learn that drugs can hide the worst hurts and exchanging wrong parts for right is only a matter or film or cred. So that's what little Min-seo did. At a mere twelve years of age, after two years of secret hormone treatment, and earlier than most surgeons would allow, Min-seo became the boy he always knew he was, re-christening himself Shock in an ironic nod to the reaction of the entire community at Hanju's Songpa blockstreet.”
― Ren Warom, Escapology

“For Amiga, family has always been part of the problem. Growing up in poverty, in that matriarchal tornado of an indifferent mother and bitter aunts and slamming against immovable walls of her father's disappointment, she learnt to disappear. When Machiko died it was the only way she could cope.”
― Ren Warom, Escapology

“The worst thing about the truth is that you can't hide from it, especially not when it's tearing through your goddamn head with giant circular blade jaws.”
― Ren Warom, Escapology

“She's always scorned his squeamishness, citing the replacement of his vagina with a dick. Joon thinks that's invasion of a far more nail-biting nature. She has no idea. It was fucking heaven. He'd do it again a million times over. And it's one hell of a long way from chopping open your head for the sake of more tech.”
― Ren Warom, Escapology

“Perhaps that's what the symbol means. What's the point of anarchy when the society you live in can shove you into a box no matter how hard you rebel? He can't help but think that's why the system evolved. To contain the uncontainable. Limit the prospects of those with limitless capacity for thought, creativity and analysis.”
― Ren Warom, Escapology

“She's wanted to erase him from her life for the longest time and never had the courage. Now she realizes it wasn't courage she needed, but this anger. This sickening, all-consuming rage.”
― Ren Warom, Escapology

“It's probably going to hurt him. Hell, it's probably going to hurt her, but it's okay. It's good. Funny thing about taking a stand that, it might hurt like hell but if it's right, there's no feeling better. She's only just realized that, and now she knows she wants to do it every single day. If she lives to see another.”
― Ren Warom, Escapology

“Funny how late is always too late.”
― Ren Warom, Escapology

“Ideas are ephemeral. Easily lost. And his was lost to him long before he realized it. All he's left with is this feeling, a hallowing combination of humiliation and profound shame over time lost, life wasted and potential squandered. But, as always, there's no way to articulate any of this to anyone. Not even to her. So he keeps walking.”
― Ren Warom, Escapology

“Guilt keeps on coming today, and never feels any less awful. The thought hadn't even occured to try to see himself for her viewpoint. And it's no excuse for him to say he only knew she had one this morning. Here he is, apparently wanting to protect her, and he hasn't even paid her the common courtesy of trying to know her beyond the abstract concept...and all because she comes with a different personal pronoun.”
― Ren Warom, Escapology

“These vertical suburbs--jet black glass structures in matte-grey iron and titanium corsets.--boast their own mayors and their own municipal services. They flicker with illegally-rerouted power and pirated water--pumped up external piping from the Toronto Syndicate's aquifers in San Jaquin.”
― Joseph MacKinnon, Cypulchre

“That's how it ought to be...Tech to live not live to tech.”
― Joseph MacKinnon, Cypulchre

“One of the things I like about Cyber World is that it shows cyberpunk has left its heteronormative boy’s club roots behind in the dust.”
― Jason Heller, Cyber World: Tales of Humanity’s Tomorrow

“Today we no longer fear technology. It’s no longer a question of assimilation. What remains to be seen is what we are about to become.”
― Jason Heller, Cyber World: Tales of Humanity’s Tomorrow

“You could love someone so strongly, for so long, and still forget—until the memories returned.”
― Jason Heller, Cyber World: Tales of Humanity’s Tomorrow

“My nerves still spark like ricocheting tracer bullets.”
― Jason Heller, Cyber World: Tales of Humanity’s Tomorrow

“I will dive to find Rosalie. She is out there, floating for me if I can only swim long enough, climbing up through silent silver bubbles up and up and free.”
― Jason Heller, Cyber World: Tales of Humanity’s Tomorrow

“Judge not what is best by pleasure, though to nature seeming meet, created as thou art to nobler end, holy and pure, conformity divine. It’s Milton, Paradise Lost, something Ashey said to me when I told him I wasn’t into porn. He’s always quoting stuff like that; he thinks it will inspire me. It does.”
― Jason Heller, Cyber World: Tales of Humanity’s Tomorrow

“It was true. Nothing was ever lost. And nothing was ever forgotten, no matter how painful. The city was like a heart that way. She had four chambers, too. She had arteries that led in and out. She kept things moving. She kept the oxygen flowing in and out, in and out, clean for dirty, dirty for clean, the filthy midnight whispers for the purest morning prayers”
― Jason Heller, Cyber World: Tales of Humanity’s Tomorrow

“her searches told her all mothers felt this way, at one time or another. There always came a day—no matter how hard one tried, no matter how tightly one locked the door and barred the windows—when the outside world would come creeping in. When your baby’s head would turn away from the glowing hearth of home and toward the glitter of false promises.”
― Jason Heller, Cyber World: Tales of Humanity’s Tomorrow

“She blew a light and watched a fire start. They would never leave her, now. I have no mouth, the city thought as she went to sleep, but I could kiss you.”
― Jason Heller, Cyber World: Tales of Humanity’s Tomorrow

“Her slender hand on the small of his back, night after night—this had saved his life.”
― Jason Heller, Cyber World: Tales of Humanity’s Tomorrow

“The electro-cauterizer sliced through the wires behind my cybernetic eye, and as the world went black, so did a large portion of my memory.”
― Jason Heller, Cyber World: Tales of Humanity’s Tomorrow

“I blinked, and the world exploded with data. Images, scanned documents and photographs, a whirlwind of numbers, under-the-table deals, and whispered words.”
― Jason Heller, Cyber World: Tales of Humanity’s Tomorrow

“Funny how they’re corpses if you didn’t know them, but bodies if you did.”
― Jason Heller, Cyber World: Tales of Humanity’s Tomorrow