User:Rawling~enwikiquote

=Quellcrist Falconer (WIP)=

Sourced

 * 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 makes 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.
 * Things I Should Have Learnt by Now, Volume II


 * Is it a wolf I hear, Howling his lonely communion With the unpiloted stars, Or merely the self importance and servitude In the bark of a dog? How many millenia did it take, Twisting and torturing The pride from the one To make a tool, The other?  And how do we measure the distance from spirit to spirit? And who do we find to blame?
 * Poems and Other Prevarications


 * The human eye is a wonderful device. With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice.
 * Poems and Other Prevarications


 * If you want to lose a fight, talk about it first.
 * Furies


 * War is like any other bad relationship. Of course you want out, but at what price? And perhaps more importantly, once you get out, will you be any better off?
 * Campaign Diaries


 * In any agenda, political or otherwise, there is a cost to be borne. Always ask what it is, and who will be paying. If you don't, then the agenda-makers will pick up the perfume of your silence like swamp panthers on the scent of blood, and the next thing you know, the person expected to bear the cost will be you. And you may not have what it takes to pay.
 * Things I Should Have Learnt by Now, Volume II


 * The difference between virtuality and life is very simple. In a construct you know everything is being run by an all-powerful machine. Reality doesn't offer this assurance, so it's very easy to develop the mistaken impression that you're in control.
 * Ethics on the Precipice


 * I have no excuses, least of all for God. Like all tyrants, he is not worthy of the spit you would waste on negotiations. The deal we have is infinitely simpler – I don't call him to account, and he extends me the same courtesy.
 * Campaign Diaries


 * Anyone who builds satellites we can't shoot down needs to be taken seriously and, if they ever come back for their hardware, be approached with caution. That's not religion, it's common sense.
 * Metaphysics for Revolutionaries.


 * Face the facts. Then act on them. It's the only mantra I know, the only doctrine I have to offer you, and it's harder than you'd think, because I swear humans seem hardwired to do anything but. Face the facts. Don't pray, don't wish, don't buy into centuries-old dogma and dead rhetoric. Don't give in to your conditioning or your visions or your fucked-up sense of... whatever. FACE THE FACTS. THEN act.
 * Speech before the Assault on Millsport.

Unsourced

 * ...but that, to quote Quellcrist Falconer, deploys no bloody divisions.
 * quoted by Takeshi Kovacs, on the deployment of Protectorate troops to quell planetary uprisings.


 * They come to me with progress reports, but all I see is change, and bodies burnt.
 * quoted by Takeshi Kovacs, on progress in a private investigation.


 * Kill them along the way, but count your bullets, for there are more worthy targets.
 * quoted by Dimitri Kadmin. On lackeys.


 * There are some arenas so corrupt that the only clean acts possible are nihilistic.
 * quoted by Takeshi Kovacs, on Earth politics.


 * If they want you, sooner or later they'll scoop you up off the globe, like specks of interesting dust off a Martian artefact. Cross the gulf between the stars, and they'll come after you. Go into centuries of storage, and they'll be there waiting for you, clone-new, when you re-sleeve. They are what we once dreamed of as gods, mythical agents of destiny, as inescapable as Death, that poor old peasant labourer, bent over his scythe, no longer is. Poor Death, no match for the mighty altered carbon technologies of data storage and retrieval arrayed against him. Once we lived in terror of his arrival. Now we flirt outrageously with his sombre dignity, and beings like these won't even let him in the tradesman's entrance.
 * quoted by Takeshi Kovacs. On the Harlan's World ruling elite.


 * How shall I explain the dying that was done? Shall I say that each one did the math, and wrote The value of his days Against the bloody margin, in an understated hand? They will want to know How was the audit done? And I shall say that it was done, For once, By those who knew the worth Of what was spent that day.
 * quoted by Dimitri Kadmin, on an upcoming fight.


 * When they ask how I died, tell them: still angry.
 * quoted by Takeshi Kovacs.


 * The essential evil of massed humanity.
 * quoted by Matthias Hand, on groupings.


 * Rip open the diseased heart of a corporation and what spills out?
 * quoted by Takeshi Kovacs, on people.


 * Male-sleeved; Stop up your hormones Or spend them in moans Of other calibre (We'll reassure you – the load is large enough) Blood-pumped Pride in your prowess Will fail you, fuck you And everything you touch (You'll reassure us – the price was small enough)
 * quoted by Takeshi Kovacs, on wars.


 * The skeletal grip of a corpse's hand round eggs trying to hatch.
 * quoted by Takeshi Kovacs, on the Protectorate.


 * You're going to be involved, you might as well have the big guns.
 * quoted by Takeshi Kovacs.