Bruce Sterling quotes - page 2

Real life was where the baby was. (Bruce Sterling)
Centralized bureaucracies always protect the status quo. They don't innovate. And it's innovation that's the real threat. View quote
Bruce Sterling
The autumn sun shone brightly. It was still the same sun and the same clouds. The sun didn't care about the landscape inside people's heads. View quote
Bruce Sterling
As tempers rose, a compromise was urged by certain moderates, whom everyone ignored. View quote
Bruce Sterling
If bin Laden is in fact publicly killed, then the US military will find itself standing around with its hands in its pockets, wondering what's supposed to come next. View quote
Bruce Sterling
I'm an entertainer in the military-entertainment complex. View quote
Bruce Sterling
I was once a student in a punk T-Shirt hooked on screwed-up scenarios. That's how I became the esteemed cultural figure that I am today. View quote
Bruce Sterling
I haven't had that good a time in ages. Since September 11, really. I just felt so happy, it was like the sun came out of the clouds for me. I love Italy. View quote
Bruce Sterling
People in the Pentagon had colleagues killed and maimed by bin Laden. They're trying to find bin Laden and kill him and his cult. Naturally they consider that a legitimate thing to do, but they're having mixed success at the job. View quote
Bruce Sterling
I like to get paid for doing basic research, so it's pleasant to write some nonfiction about it. View quote
Bruce Sterling
I don't think there's much distinction between surveillance and media in general. Better media means better surveillance. Cams are everywhere. (Bruce Sterling)
Saying you have a political solution is like saying you can write a pop song that's going to stay at the top of the list forever. I don't have many illusions about this, but I'm not cynical about it. View quote
Bruce Sterling
Mashups [...] nobody's going to listen to mashups in another ten years. Mashups are novelty music. They're like "The Monster Mash." They have no musical staying power. You're pursuing a phantom there. It's bad music, I mean, it's not bad- it's a pastiche, it's like magazine collage- which can be good for what it is. But to pretend that that's like tremendous creative work- No! It's a tremendous creative power- and it can have a tremendous audience, but it's not tremendously good. And we need a little bit of aesthetic honesty in confronting things like this. Just because it's new, and people with laptops can do it, and get away with it, and find an audience for it, does not make it a real cultural advance. It's an epiphenomenon. View quote
Bruce Sterling
The internet brought many laudable things, but prosperity, stability, accountability and honest politics were not four of them. View quote
Bruce Sterling
A set of Bollywood actresses are coming through Dallas soon in a live tour I'd pay a lot to see them, but alas, I'm fully booked elsewhere. View quote
Bruce Sterling
It's going to be really interesting to see what the heroin market does in the next two years or so. One thing you can be pretty sure of. The Afghan peasants who grow poppies won't get rich. The money will end up in places like Dubai. View quote
Bruce Sterling
They used to be seen as insane or unthinkable acts of madmen. But if they take place they'll be called "war" too. And there will still be no conventional war. View quote
Bruce Sterling
The Net was a lot like television, another former wonder of the age. The Net was a vast glass mirror. It reflected what it was shown. Mostly human banality. View quote
Bruce Sterling
Clearly, Mother de Gupta dearly loved motherhood – mostly, for the chance that it offered her to boss around small, helpless people. View quote
Bruce Sterling
The Dark Age world had all kinds of potential issues that might bother Anita Atkinson: climate crisis, state collapse, financial ruin, mass extinction, catastrophic population dieback. None of those things bothered Anita, though, because she didn't understand long words. View quote
Bruce Sterling
Revolutions. New Orders. For Laura the words had the cobwebby taste of twentieth-century thinking. Visionary mass movements were all over the 1900s, and whenever they broke through, blood followed in buckets. (Bruce Sterling)
The world doesn't give a shit how noble your motives are-it'll roll right over you. That's how it works. View quote
Bruce Sterling