Ian McDonald

Ian McDonald (born 1960) is a British science fiction novelist.

Sourced

Desolation Road (1988)

All page numbers from the trade paperback edition published by Pyr

• “Hey!” the people cried in their dreams. “Give us back our ghosts!” for ghosts are as much a part of a community as its plumbing or its library, for how can a community be without its memories?
  • Chapter 18 (p. 94)

• These songs were the true names of things, spoken by the soul, so easily buried under the little busynesses of everyman everyday.
  • Chapter 22 (p. 111)

• It was fate, and being angry at fate was as futile as being angry at the weather.
  • Chapter 23 (p. 116)

• She knew what she was now. She had a purpose. Freedom was still hers, but it was a purposeful freedom. She would seek responsibility, for freedom without responsibility was worthless, and to that duality she would add power, for responsibility without power was impotence. She would go to Wisdom and enthrone the trinity of liberties within herself.
  • Chapter 31 (p. 162)

• She had trapped the bird of salvation, sung to it, tamed it and wrung its neck.
  • Chapter 32 (p. 168)

• The five minutes ticked away on Limaal Mandella’s fob watch and the tension wound tight around Corporation Plaza. Rael Mandella Jr., sweating in his father’s best championship suit, was horrified to realize how few of such brief five-minute periods went to make up a lifetime.
  • Chapter 47 (p. 238)

• Once muddying subjectivities are removed from the issue, the decision becomes clear.
  • Chapter 49 (p. 247)

• A chilly piety leaked into the air.
  • Chapter 49 (p. 248)

• Ghosts? Pah. We are the most substantial things in the world, the foundations of the present. We are memories.
  • Chapter 54 (p. 270)

• Profit, Empire, Industry. What was a dead lake, a few poisoned rivers, a few slagged hillsides? Priorities, that was what it was about. Priorities and Progress.
  • Chapter 56 (p. 276)

• She had not won a clean victory. Tinkering with time and history offended her political sensibilities. History was written in the stones. It was not a numinous thing to be tossed sparkling in the air to lie where it fell. She did not like to think of her life and world as a mere mutability of potentials.
  • Chapter 64 (p. 327)