Alastair Quotes & Sayings

I am far more interested in being a beginner than in trying to become an expert. Life is difficult and complicated for everyone - but it's very, very short. — Alastair Humphreys

It's the people who don't worry - those who never have any doubts that what they're doing is good and right - they're the ones that cause the problems. — Alastair Reynolds

Of course. Life would be tough for a repo man in the starship business. * * * The — Alastair Mayer

There is something in me that makes me see things through. — Alastair Campbell

None of us is a monster, Chiku. We're all just trying to make the best of our singular natures. — Alastair Reynolds

I really struggle to pinpoint whether I became a scientist because I like science fiction, or did I gravitate to science fiction because I identified strongly with scientists. — Alastair Reynolds

I think we need to think beyond the issue of absolute risk. — Alastair Wood

Wes is Wes," Alastair said. "One in every family. I love him, but I think of him as a sarcastic pet. — John Scalzi

Some promises are best broken. Trust me on this: I'm a politician. — Alastair Reynolds

IPL does not allow Pakistani players because they are dangerous. — Alastair Cook

My aunty says I'm the double of my father. He was a workaholic, which I've definitely inherited. And like me, he could be the life and soul of the party, but also quite withdrawn. — Alastair Campbell

It's not how far you've come that matters. It's where you've come from. — Alastair Reynolds

Don't accept that you are in crisis just because everyone says you are. — Alastair Campbell

To Sky, Clown had become something to be understood; something to be dissected and parameterised. Clown, he now recognised, was something like the bubble-drawing the dolphin had made in the water: a projection carved from light rather than sound. — Alastair Reynolds

Consider all the inanimate matter in the universe, all the dumb atoms, all the mindless molecules, all the oblivious dust grains and pebbles and rocks and iceballs and worlds and stars, all the unthinking galaxies and superclusters, wheeling through the oblivious time-haunted megaparsecs of the cosmic supervoid.
In all that immensity, she had somehow contrived to BE a human being, a microscopically tiny, cosmically insignificant bundle of information-processing systems, wired to a mind more structurally complex than the Milky Way itself, maybe even more complex than the rest of the *whole damned universe*! — Alastair Reynolds

War was about yawning chasms of inactivity, punctuated by brief, screaming interludes of action. And in those brief, screaming interludes, events happened both quickly and with dreamlike slowness, every instant burned into memory. — Alastair Reynolds

At one time, the treatment for a certain kind of psychosis had been to push an ice pick up through the orbit of the eye, into the frontal lobe; the ice pick was then stirred around until it reduced the problematic brain tissue to non-functioning porridge. — Alastair Reynolds

I feel like thanking Paul Dacre every time, because the reason they ask me is because they think I've come through the other end with a pretty good reputation. Loads of people get a bad press but have a good reputation. [David] Beckham - think what he went through. [Bill] Clinton, likewise. You just have to be true to yourself. — Alastair Campbell

Like most meaningful activities, campaigns are team games. — Alastair Campbell

Volyova did not like planets at the best of times, and gas giants struck her as an unreasonable affront to human scale and frailty. In that respect, they were almost as bad as stars. — Alastair Reynolds

Has a control system so perilously close to intelligence that a government agent must be on hand at all times, ready to destroy the machine if it slips over the threshold into consciousness. — Alastair Reynolds

All of this is happening because there has still been no reckoning post the financial crisis. So governments have fallen, one bloke has been to prison, the banks have gone pretty well back to status quo, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. And it's fuelling anger. And somehow [Donald] Trump, who represents the worst aspects of capitalism, has persuaded people he can deal with that. — Alastair Campbell

Soon there would be a final morning, a final afternoon, a final sunrise. She measured her life by these thoughts and then reprimanded herself for not simply enjoying such pleasures while she still could. — Alastair Reynolds

For a moment I think we were turned into information, and that in that instant we were linked to every other piece of information ever known; every thought ever thought, or at least ever captured by the light. — Alastair Reynolds

The first six million years had been all fun and games. — Alastair Reynolds

Tony Blair has always said he will be judged by history. Now Alastair Campbell is history we await his judgment. — Rory Bremner

I'm always serious about my fun. I — Alastair Reynolds

Having created these cognitively enhanced creatures, the safest option at the time appeared to be to launch them into interstellar space. — Alastair Reynolds

The thing about politicians in Britain is that they are out there, you can lobby them, get close to them, there are loads of ways you can protest against them, and booing is a pretty weak way of doing it. — Alastair Campbell

I think I might have a glass of champagne, if there is any in Nagpur, and just enjoy the moment. — Alastair Cook

This may sound arrogant, but I believe that if we'd done teamship better, we'd still be there. Where we fell down was the inability to hold together. We should have learnt from the great football teams. The players may not like each other. They have egos, they have their own ambitions, they have different personalities, but they are still bloody good teams. — Alastair Campbell

My public caricature - that of a self-confident alpha male - is only partly accurate. — Alastair Campbell

I used to be very routine-based and the new thing in my life is not having a clear, full-time existence. — Alastair Campbell

I don't know who started this thing about being perfect but the sooner we ditch that idea the happier we all will be! — Alastair Arnott

There has been a shift to what may be defined as a culture of negativity which goes well beyond coverage of politics. — Alastair Campbell

When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.
[As attributed by Alastair Reid in Neruda and Borges, The New Yorker, June 24, 1996; as well as in The Talk of the Town, The New Yorker, July 7, 1986] — Jorge Luis Borges

Without risk in our lives, we're scarcely better than machines ourselves. — Alastair Reynolds

Everything came and went, everything was new and bright with promise once and old and worn out later, and everything left a small, diminishing stain on eternity, a mark that time would eventually erase. — Alastair Reynolds

One in four of us will have a mental illness at some point. That is a lot of people. — Alastair Campbell

Matter is lazy. It resists change. It wants to keep on doing whatever it's doing, whether that's sitting still or moving. We call that laziness inertia, but that doesn't mean we understand it. For a thousand years we've labelled it, quantified it, caged it in equations, but we've still only scratched the surface of what it really is. — Alastair Reynolds

We don't own them, and we don't have any claims on moral superiority. But after all we've done to them in the past we do have an obligation to shepherd them through to better times.' He — Alastair Reynolds

Clinton is a big personality who has led a big life, and for some of the media conventional wisdom to boil it down to a view that 'all people are really interested in' are a few moments of madness in the Oval Office gets him, the importance of the presidency, and the significance of his life, all wrong. — Alastair Campbell

One of the big breakthroughs I had as a writer was when I stopped agonising over every word. — Alastair Reynolds

I live each day as it comes." "It's the only way. Pedro — Alastair Reynolds

Meddling is what we do. It's what defines us. Meddling gave us fire and tools and civilisation and the keys to the universe. Fingers will get burnt along the way, yes. That's the way of it. — Alastair Reynolds

I am playing in a playground that's already been played in. I am always aware that a lot of the furniture in science fiction is second hand. — Alastair Reynolds

Sometimes all you need is to climb a simple hill, to spend time staring at an empty horizon, to jump into a cold river or sleep under the stars, or perhaps share a whisky at a small country inn in order to remind yourself what matters most to you in life. — Alastair Humphreys

And the knowledge that humanity was not alone in the universe would be as relevant to most as the knowledge that protons were built of quarks. — Alastair Reynolds

Half of all the great art and literature in existence went unrecognised during the lifetimes of its creators. — Alastair Reynolds

Such was the nature of obsessions: no quarter given for the human cost. — Alastair Reynolds

I see my job as being to facilitate the life of clinical researchers so that they can be more productive, and trying to keep the bureaucracy from getting in their way. — Alastair Wood

They would continue to live in New Tiamaat, orbiting Crucible. — Alastair Reynolds

I have a nightmare about Tony [Blair] and Gordon [Brown] killing each other. Not every month, but now and then. I also have a recurring dream about losing. — Alastair Campbell

You've found a way to stay sane, Renfew--even if that means admitting a tiny piece of piano-playing madness into your world. But there's a cost to that sanity, and it isn't moi. the cost is you can't ever allow yourself an instant of hope, because hope is something that will always be crushed, crushed utterly, and in the crushing of hope you will be weakened forever, just as surely as if you'd mainlined some slow-acting poison."
~"Understanding Space & Time — Alastair Reynolds

There was a moment of absolute cosmic cold, as if a billion tiny doors had opened in every cell of his body, letting in the draught of creation. — Alastair Reynolds

Only an evolutionary eyeblink separated Kanu from the savannah, and that was just as true for the Risen. Their minds might be fixed on the stars, but their bodies were only a footstep from the dust and heat of Amboseli. — Alastair Reynolds

That she had loved Sylveste because he was such a self-important bastard and made something noble of being a self-important bastard, did it with such utter aplomb that it became a kind of virtue, like the wearing of sackcloth — Alastair Reynolds

But the trouble with simulations is that they put up with far too much shit. — Alastair Reynolds

She hesitated, aware that an ill-judged phrase might anger Triumvir Hegazi; not that she particularly cared. Dared she call it the Melding Plague, now that the Yellowstoners had given it a name? Perhaps that would be unwise. — Alastair Reynolds

As Tony [Blair] said in his book, Gordon [Brown] was brilliant and impossible. If he'd just been one of those things, the options are obvious. — Alastair Campbell

It looked like a biology lesson for gods, or a snapshot of the kind of pornography which might be enjoyed by sentient planets. — Alastair Reynolds

Rise to the occasion. Roar like a lion. — Alastair Reynolds

I will continue to help the political causes I believe in in any way I can. — Alastair Campbell

One of the more fatuous remarks I've heard in recent days is that 'My Life,' Clinton's autobiography, is too long and, at almost 1,000 pages, short it is not. But this man was for eight years the President of the most powerful country on earth. — Alastair Campbell

Behold, Mr. Clavain: Chasm City. A place I have to come to know and, while not actually love, perhaps not to detest with quite the same missionary zeal as when I first arrived. — Alastair Reynolds

By asking the question 'Am I happy?,' and via the answer setting out what I mean by happiness, there is a political route that can be taken, by asking another question - 'Can politics deliver happiness, and should it try?' — Alastair Campbell

We have worlds to save, Doctor Aziba."
"That sounds ... compelling," the physician allowed. — Alastair Reynolds

them were spectres uncertain of each other's reality. They , held each other for what seemed like many more hours than the one they had been allocated; not because time dragged, but because for now time was unimportant; it was in abeyance, and it seemed as if it could be held that way by the act of will alone. — Alastair Reynolds

The flare-watch in East Nekhebet had picked up an energy pulse, much brighter than anything seen previously. Briefly, there was the worrying possibility that Delta Pavonis was about to repeat the flare which had wiped out the Amarantin: the vast coronal mass ejection known as the Event. But closer examination revealed that the flare did not originate from the star, but rather from something several light-hours beyond it, on the edge of the system. — Alastair Reynolds

I cannot bear to go back alone - to the world I have lived in with you. — Georgette Heyer

Then centrifugal gravity took over, and with something close to majesty the skeletal spacecraft descended out of the repair bay as smoothly and elegantly as a falling chandelier. — Alastair Reynolds

He watched Carl pouring coffee into a huge mug bearing a photo of a cute corgi, below which was the word Alastair. — K.C. Wells

Jeremy, are we going to play your games? — Alastair Campbell

When you're writing stuff that's already clotted with neologisms and trying to get across fairly abstruse concepts, you're already putting a heavy burden on the reader. — Alastair Reynolds

A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy. — Alastair Reynolds

The bad news for journalists today is that the media, however seriously people who are in the public eye take it, is not taken as seriously as it once was - by the public. — Alastair Campbell

Tony's [Blair] convinced I'm going to find God. I do have spiritual moments, but I don't think it's God. — Alastair Campbell

Is that what happened to Mercier?" "No - not quite. In so far as I understood Sukhoi's work, it appeared that the zero-mass state would be very difficult to realise physically. As it neared the zero-mass state, the vacuum would be inclined to flip to the other side. Sukhoi called it a tunnelling phenomenon." Clavain raised an eyebrow. "The other side?" "The quantum-vacuum state in which matter has imaginary inertial mass. By imaginary I mean in the purely mathematical sense, in the sense that the square root of minus one is an imaginary number. Of course, you immediately see what that would imply." "You're talking about tachyonic matter," Clavain said. "Matter travelling faster than light. — Alastair Reynolds

There was another intelligence out there, close enough to touch. And even if they were now gone, then the mere existence of their handiwork was wonder enough to fundamentally change humanity's view of the universe. — Alastair Reynolds

Still, it was vision, or at least vision's idiot cousin. — Alastair Reynolds

To be remembered at all is an achievement of sorts. — Alastair Reynolds

I always take an Alastair Sawday guide. I stayed in three or four places in India that they had recommended, and every one of them was wonderful. — Diana Quick

For all that the papers would say I was a liar, I took the words I was saying at briefings as seriously as Tony Blair took what he would say at the Despatch Box. I find it very difficult not to tell the truth. I felt I was accountable for what I said. — Alastair Campbell

Then they'd be wrong. It's only our deeds that make us evil, Tanner; they're what define us, nothing else, not our intentions or feelings. But what are a few bad deeds compared to a life, especially the kinds of lives we can live now? — Alastair Reynolds

The next time you need a piece of apparently obscure information, try asking a science fiction writer. You might be surprised. — Alastair Reynolds

You worry that we're becoming monsters. Merlin, we already were monsters. You didn't make us any worse. — Alastair Reynolds

Weapons readiness?" "Nominal," Dalal — Alastair Reynolds

Clavain was looking at a hyperpig: a genetic chimera of pig and human. — Alastair Reynolds

The day of the daredevil reporter who refuses to see obstacles to getting the truth, and seeing it with his or her own eyes, seems to have died. — Alastair Campbell

I thought my Beatles LPs sounded pretty good on a record player, but that was before I had heard a CD. — Alastair Wood

So here is one of my theories on happiness: we cannot know if we have lived a truly happy life until the very end. This view of life and death was reinforced by my close witnessing of the buildup to the death of Philip Gould. Philip was without doubt my closest friend in politics. When he died, I felt like I had lost a limb. — Alastair Campbell

We're all Poseidon's children, Geoffrey: whether we like it or not."

"Poseidon's children," he repeated. "Is that supposed to mean something?"

"We came through. That's all. We weathered the absolute worst that history could throw at us, and we thrived. Now it's time to start doing something useful with our lives. — Alastair Reynolds

Enjoy it, kid. Enjoy feeling that you can make a difference.' Floyd flashed him a smile. 'It won't last for ever. — Alastair Reynolds

I pushed my hand into the open slot of the maker and closed my fingers around the sculpted handle of the energy-pistol. The newly minted weapon had the peculiar heft of something crammed with intricate machinery at abnormal densities. — Alastair Reynolds

Sluka shook her head. We're talking about them in the past tense, and we never even discussed them in the present. It's like their only reason for existing was so they could die. — Alastair Reynolds

I think the danger with using the term 'trilogy' is that it sets up particular expectations in the reader's mind. — Alastair Reynolds

Being a Scotsman, I am naturally opposed to water in its undiluted state. — Alastair Mackenzie

I think the deeper we go, the less likelihood we'll have of being recognised as something unwanted. It's like the human body - the greatest density of pain receptors lies in the skin. — Alastair Reynolds

We've created an impression that life is risk-free, and it's not. — Alastair Wood

You look older, son." "Yes, well, some of us have to get on with the business of being alive in the entropic universe. — Alastair Reynolds