Brock

“Better to live in the ruins of empire, I thought, and stand a hope of being remembered, than to be lost in those golden multitudes.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Shadow Captain

“Just a bit of violent shaking and thwacking ejected a few spurts of the ochre slurry from the pore-size orifice at the top of the bottle, which was guarded by a quarter-inch encrustation. Most of it hit his plate, and some impacted on his sandwich.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“But there will come a time, even if it’s the heat death of the universe, when they will be gone. The living and the struggle is all. The moments of joy and sorrow, not just as stepping stones to the future, but taken on their own merits.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Memory

“Western political thought tended to be rather brittle; as soon as the state became corrupt, everything ceased to make sense. Confucianism always retained its equilibrium, like a cork that could float as well in spring water or raw sewage.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age