China Miéville quotes - page 6

I remember vividly what it's like to read as a 10-year-old - that passionate inhabiting of a book. (China Miéville)
'Kraken' is a very undisciplined book. That's a gamble. If it doesn't come off, it's disastrous. But there are pleasures, I think, to a meandering lack of discipline that you can't get the other way, and vice versa. View quote
China Miéville
There's plenty of stuff that I don't feel dissident about: I really like tea, I don't have any problem with that. I like lots of paintings. View quote
China Miéville
So long as it fated, fate didn't care what it fated. View quote
China Miéville
There's simultaneously something rigorous and something playful in genre. It's about the positing of something impossible-whether not-yet-possible or never-possible-and then taking that impossibility and granting it its own terms and systematicity. It's carnivalesque in its impossibility and overturning of reality, but it's rationalist in that it pretends it is real. And it's that second element which I think those who dip their toes in the SF pond so often forget. They think sf is "about” analogies, and metaphors, and so on. I refute that-I think that those are inevitable components, but it's the surrendering to the impossible, the weird, that characterizes genre. Those flirting with SF don't surrender to it; they distance themselves from it, and have a neon sub-text saying, "It's okay, this isn't really about spaceships or aliens, it's about real life,” not understanding that it can be both, and would do the latter better if it was serious about the former. View quote
China Miéville
Koning was a self-made expert. She snuggled what she'd bought in the nest she had made of shredded grimoires and scrunched-up rules of engagement. She watched it. It did nothing. View quote
China Miéville
Joanna took Mel to Dresden, to the Frauenkirche. The timed their visit to coincide with a monthly English evensong. "Firebombs not enough?” Mel whispered. "Now we inflict Anglicanism on them?”. View quote
China Miéville
That was a salvo of something against something. View quote
China Miéville
The water here reflects the stars through a stinking rainbow of impurities, effluents and chymical slop, making it sluggish and unsettling. (Oh, to rise above this to not smell this filth this dirt this dung to not enter the city through this latrine but I must stop, I must, I cannot go on, I must.) View quote
China Miéville
They had always tried not to think too hard about the rules of their relationship, but the longer they were together the more this strategy of avoidance became impossible. Questions as yet unasked demanded attention. Innocent remarks and askance looks from others, a moment of contact too long in public-a note from a grocer-everything was a reminder that they were, in some contexts, living a secret. Everything was made fraught. They had never said, We are lovers, so they had never had to say, We will not disclose our relationship to all, we will hide from some. But it had been clear for months and months that this was the case. View quote
China Miéville
But Isaac's research-unchanged in its aims over all those years-could not proceed in a vacuum. He had to publish. He had to debate. He had to argue, to attend conferences-as the rogue, the rebellious son. There were great advantages to renegacy. (China Miéville)
I see clearly as you, clearer. For you it is undifferentiated. In one corner a slum collapsing, in another a new train with pistons shining, in another a gaudy painted lady below a drab and ancient airship... You must process as one picture. What chaos! Tells you nothing, contradicts itself, changes its story. For me each tiny part has integrity, each fractionally different from the next, until all variation is accounted for, incrementally, rationally. View quote
China Miéville
She was an outsider. Had left her sisters. Forgotten hive and moiety. View quote
China Miéville
I know, I know,” Moore said. "Mad beliefs like that, eh? Must be some metaphor, right? Must mean something else?” Shook his head. "What an awfully arrogant thing. What if faiths are exactly what they are? And mean exactly what they say? View quote
China Miéville
Why wouldn't the gods of the world be giant squid? What better beast? It wouldn't take much to imagine those tentacles closing around the world, now would it? View quote
China Miéville
In the emptied remains of a foreign bank was a sports shop. Below posters of physically adept men was a glass-front cabinet and iron grille, behind which was a big chunk of stone...The London Stone. That old rock was always suspiciously near the centre of things. A chunk of the Millarium, the megalith-core from where the Romans measured distances...This had been the seat of sovereignty, and it cropped up throughout the city's history if you knew where to look...the Stone was the heart, the heart was stone, and it beat from its various places, coming to rest at last here in an insalubrious sports shop between cricket equipment. View quote
China Miéville
That was how he did it. He was never just a thug. Just thugs only ever got so far. The best thugs were all psychologists. View quote
China Miéville
The sea. I bet you the sea might have ideas. Wouldn't surprise me if the bastard ocean might have a little something to do with all this. Stands to reason, right? Taking back what's its? Render unto sea, sir. View quote
China Miéville
Could you really feel the hand of destiny while pointing a Glock? View quote
China Miéville
This was the remnant of honour, nostalgic for spurious legendary times. View quote
China Miéville
He had remembered Vardy's melancholy, the rage in him, and what Collingswood had once said. She was right. Vardy's tragedy was that his faith had been defeated by the evidence, and he could not stop missing that faith. He was not a creationist, not any longer, not for years. And that was unbearable to him. He could only wish that his erstwhile wrongness had been right. (China Miéville)