China Miéville quotes - page 3

Neither dust nor light stirred. It was as if time had been bled dry and given up. (China Miéville)
She felt so alien, bowed under culture shock as crippling as migraine. View quote
China Miéville
Lin realized that she was living in an unsustainable realm. It combined sanctimony, decadence, insecurity and snobbery in a weird, neurotic brew. It was parasitic. View quote
China Miéville
I refuse to play the wink-wink-nudge-nudge game with readers. I don't like whimsy because it doesn't treat the fantastic seriously, and treating the fantastic seriously is one of the best ways of celebrating dialectical human consciousness there is. The one-sided celebration of the ego-driven contextually constrained instrumentally rational (as opposed to rational in a broader sense) is bureaucratic: the one-sided celebration of the subconscious, desire/fantasy driven is at best utopian, at worst sociopathic. The best fantasies-which include sf and horror-are constructed with a careful dialectic between conscious and subconscious. View quote
China Miéville
I'm not waiting to die, I don't believe I'll die, I am waiting for something else. To arrive. To understand. To be at my destination. View quote
China Miéville
There is no theology so desperate that you can't find it. View quote
China Miéville
We're all racing,” he said. "Yeah, but some of us in the wrong direction. View quote
China Miéville
We have watched mutant creatures crawl from sewers into cold flat starlight and whisper shyly to each other, drawing maps and messages in faecal mud. I have sat with the wind at my side and seen cruel things, wicked things. My scars and bonestubs itch. I am forgetting the weight, the sweep, the motion of wings. If I were not garuda I would pray. But I will not obeise myself before arrogant spirits. View quote
China Miéville
I see echoes with lots of books in all my books, some deliberate, some unconscious until later, and as long as that is respectful I think that's great - writing on the shoulders of other writers is a privilege. View quote
China Miéville
This was the most difficult, the most extraordinary transition. Her body had been a source of shame and disgust; to engage in activities with no purpose at all except to revel in their sheer physicality had first nauseated, then terrified, and finally liberated her. View quote
China Miéville
Tearfly looked at Bellis curiously, bewildered by her ignorance. She did not care. What was important to her was where she was fleeing from, not where she was, or where she was going. (China Miéville)
There are no cats in UnLondon, for example, because they're not magic and mysterious at all, they're idiots. View quote
China Miéville
I am often asked is [my work] science fiction or fantasy and my answer is usually ‘Yes'. View quote
China Miéville
I want to know everything, he says. View quote
China Miéville
It's the first principle, isn't it? Whoever's arguing fiercest for violence is the cop. View quote
China Miéville
In a newsagent's he picked up a copy of the Standard, and hesitated by the chocolate, looking at the low-fat version he had trained himself to pretend he liked but suddenly hungry for a real bar, which with guilty devil-may-care he took and paid for. View quote
China Miéville
You make what you see into a window, and you see what you want through it. You make what you see a sort of a door. View quote
China Miéville
I told myself I had no choice but in a situation like that the choice you have is how you go about not having a choice. View quote
China Miéville
We know the axes on which we should judge, and age has never been one. View quote
China Miéville
You were sick of sentimentality, of the moralism, maneuvering, and malice that comes with it. View quote
China Miéville
Although we revolutionary socialists are always accused of being Utopian, nothing strikes me as more Utopian than the reformist belief that with a bit of tinkering and some good faith, we can systematically improve the world. You have to ask how many decades of broken promises and failed schemes it will take to disprove that hope. Marxism isn't about saying you'll get a perfect world: it's about saying we can get a better world than this one, and it's hard to imagine, no matter how many mistakes we make, that it could be much worse than the mass starvation, war, oppression, and exploitation we have now. In a world where 30,000 to 40,000 children die of malnutrition daily while grain ships are designed to dump food into the sea if the price dips too low, it's worth the risk. (China Miéville)
Abomination from one perspective, it was advertising copy from another. View quote
China Miéville
Lists make magic, the rhythm of itemized words: you do not list ten techniques, numbered and chantable, in austere prose appropriate for some early-millennium rebooted Book of Thoth, and not know that you have written an incantation. View quote
China Miéville
They think I'm old-fashioned? Is being against racism and hatred old-fashioned? OK, I'm old-fashioned. View quote
China Miéville
Metamorphosis is death. Inside a pupa larval flesh breaks down utterly, as if in chemical spill. Eyes do not become other eyes nor mouthparts mouths. All parts are lost in a reconfiguring slop, as absolutely formless as a salted slug, that ex liquid nihilo self-organizes into a quite other animal. A cocoon is not a transformation pod but an execution chamber, one that doubles as a birthplace, and is parsimonious with matter. View quote
China Miéville