Alex London Quotes

Laugh a little Syd," Knox said. "Life is too short for perpetual misery.

His proxy turned and thrashed in his sleep, but Knox didn't wake him. His dreams, like everyone Else's, were his own. So were his nightmares.

Every revolution believes it can return something that has been lost, but nothing is ever the same. The only thing that edures are people.

A life for a life. All debts have to be repaid.

In the end, someone would have to pay for it. Everything costs.

The moment my son died my own heartbeat turned against me

They understood what had really held the market together before. Violence. After all, what good was a debt if the creditor couldn't compel it to be paid?

Remaking the world wasn't always a stage show and a cheering crowd. Politics was just warfare by other means. The losers didn't get to hold rallies.

... but she believed and that was the price of belief. It gave no discounts to friendship (p370)

Then he pulled Liam forward and pressed their lips together. The kiss was no longer than a second, but in that second, any walls between them fell. Liam's body was Syd's body; Syd's mind was Liam's mind. someones eyelashes tickled and they drew apart

(Yovel) "Jubilee," said Maire. "The day when all debts are forgiven."..."Yes," said Mr.Baram. "In the old holy books, there was a commandment that every fifty years, all debts were to be forgiven, all slaves were to be freed and all property returned. You are marked with the word of that commandment.

Those who were defiant, like Marie, would defy until they dropped dead. The maudlin would weep and the deal makers would bargain and the jokers would joke, but every last one of them would die.

Again, Syd had that feeling, the past as an echo, repeating itself as it faded. The poor had longed for Jubilee to save them from the powerful, and now the one-time patrons longed for the Machine to do the same. Every revolution believes it can return something that had been lost, but nothing is ever the same. The only thing that endures are people. Syd saw that clearly now, and perhaps so too did Marie. You could serve a revolution, an idea that ended up an echo if itself, or you could serve people, with their maddening contradictions. You couldn't serve both. You had to choose.

This is bigger than you," said Mr. Baram. "You can bring down this whole system. Erase the data that enslaves so many. Jubilee. Freedom. Forgiveness. Is that not enough?

Knox's father shrugged. "They're children. We don't need their forgiveness.

It was good to be admired for something. Everyone should feel that way sometimes, he thought.

Destiny is just the inevitable result of choice, from the choices that came before us to the choices we make. They are a river that can only flow in one direction.

We should all get a little forgiveness - without it, there can be no kindness.

I'd burn the world down if it would make you smile

Great poems know more than their poets, but they cannot exist without them.

What made some words scarier than others, some sounds too dangerous to be said? Memory. It wasn't the words themselves that had power but the memories that stuck to words like ticks on deer, draining and infecting them. If you shut down your memory and ignored the knowing-self inside you, you could say anything.

Of course, it made no sense. The goat couldn't object or agree. The goat couldn't forgive. The goat didn't even know what was happening. Only humans could accept responsibility, and only humans could take on a debt. Only humans could stand in for one another...A goat would always be a goat, but humans can change how they define one another and how they define themselves. That was civilization.

He wondered if anyone really ever changed, or if stuff just piled on and on, covering up, but never erasing all the different parts. How deep would you have to dig to find who you started out as?

It's not easy to throw your life away, even for a good reason, even when it's the right thing to do. It was simple enough. Debt or no: Syd did not want to die.

The only people who couldn't understand the brutal lengths others would go to for money were the people who'd never been without it.

Yes, he wanted to tell Krystof, it will hurt. Even if you don't get sick like them. It will hurt.

I'd rather live in a world where I get to love the moon than in one where I don't, even if the moon won't return the feeling.

Nature cannot be reprogrammed forever. Humans are not meant to run like software. You cannot hack the human condition.

Being alive and living aren't the same.

There was no convincing him that only a fool chased the approval of a dead man.

Civilization without humanity was just a graveyard

He was a real-life soldier playing soldier from his memories of made up soldiers.

Power is, and will forever be, tethered to its own weakness.

He took deep breaths. He wanted to sleep. At least in sleeping, he could find a kind of peace. At least in sleeping, he could dream about his dead friends and maybe, until the sun came up, feel like he wasn't all alone.