Maximilian Birkl

“She was like, Oh, my God, you’re drinking, aren’t you. You’re on amphetamines. You are on coke. You are on amphetamines and coke. I was all, Yeah…Coke Zero. She didn’t laugh. I laughed.
He said, I guess I’ve always thought any pun was automatically funny.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Mahit couldn't decide if she was horrified, proud, or simply, deliciously, hideously intrigued.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“The motion of a swift is an impenetrable language; as incomprehensible to me as the thoughts of a flower when it opens its petals at dawn, without memory or mind. A coherent logic and a dance, but not one I can shape within myself. All my attempts are approximation. One cannot render meaning in language one finds meaningless; nevertheless I know there is a design, a speaking, a world just on the other side of shadow, untouchable but nonetheless real. Three years since I came home from Ebrekt, and I still dream of the swifts, running: in dreams, sometimes I understand them.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“He didn’t even ask me to explain. That was the kind of guy he was. He and I had grown up on the same street. I’d spotted him for mince pies all the time as kids, so stands to reason he let me cut off his arm and carried a nuke for me.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth