The Nightmare Stacks Quotes

“In memory of Terry Pratchett,
who showed us all how it’s done”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“but he understands she’s twenty now (how did that happen?)”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“Old Enochian running on neural wetware is not the fastest procedural language ever invented, and it’s semantics make AppleScript look like a thing of elegance and beauty”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“It’s not as if he’s had much of a chance until now, but somehow he has internalized the ur-cultural narrative: you grow up, go to university, get a job, meet Ms. Right, get married, settle down, have kids, grow old together . . . it’s like some sort of checklist. Or maybe a list of epic quests you’ve got to complete while level-grinding in a game you’re not allowed to quit, with no respawns and no cheat codes.”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“loose lips don’t merely sink ships, they summon krakens with too many tentacles.”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“There's always some idiot who thinks that after the revolution they'll be the one sitting on top of the hill of corpses, dining on caviar served out of a bowl made of a chromed baby's skull.”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“We’re going to need swords: lots of swords.”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence or overwork?”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“In our tongue we would say alfär.”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“Lockhart twitches. “I do not think Stockholm syndrome means quite what you think it means.” “What, the tendency of people—usually women—in unfamiliar societies to enculturate rapidly?” Lockhart inclines his head. “Point.”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“But the relief he gains from feeding does nothing for the numb sense of grief that outlasts his hunger, and leaves him so fragile that he has to sit for half an hour before he is ready to unlock the door and switch off the DO NOT DISTURB sign.”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“Organizations are not human beings and they don’t obey the same priorities. They’re hives. Like the bank you worked for, I suppose, but you were too specialized, working at too low a level to see the politics going on around you. Hives run on emergent consensus and policy.”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“Everything he’s learned about the Civil Service tells him that having tea poured for you is one of the ferociously guarded signifiers of rank, like the grade of paintings from the Government Art Collection hung on your office wall, or the quality of your carpet.”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“The morning after her date with her nerdishly cute prince of darkness, Cassie is scheduled for a lecture at nine o’clock. She blows it off because life’s too short and anyway the world is going to end in about two weeks’ time, when the Second Heavy Cavalry Brigade rumbles into town accompanied by skies that rain wyrmfire and the death spells of combat magi.”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“Martian invasion: sure, the Army understands what it needs to do, if not necessarily how to go about it. Religious apocalypses involving the Four Horsemen: pass the holy water and bend over, here it comes again. But invasion by the armies of Middle Earth—who ordered that?”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“But what are we going to do with a load of guns?” asks Pete. “I don’t know, Brains, what are we going to do with a half-track full of guns?” Pinky asks. Brains chuckles. “Same thing we do every night, Pinky—” “Fort up and wait for reinforcements,” Pinky says flatly.”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“the beasts that perish,”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“CHAPTER 15: RAIN OF STEEL CHAPTER 16: SCHWERPUNKT PART 4: BLOOD OATHS CHAPTER 17: STATE OF SIEGE CHAPTER 18: SCORPION STARE CHAPTER 19: ASYLUM Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason. —John Harington (16th century)”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“FOXP2,”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“(Some are dealing with the injured chargers: it’s a tense and bloody business, for damaged equoids don’t simply scream piteously and wait to die like horses.)”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“Lockhart glares at him furiously. “Sitrep, then get out.” “What was that—” Pete begins, his words already in motion before he processes Lockhart’s reaction. “That was the last we’ll hear from a very brave woman. Or a very stupid one. Damn.”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“We’re still alive so they’re all dead back there. Clearly, or we’d be dead, too, sitting around with our thumbs up our ass like this.”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“After a few seconds to savor his self-derailment, Derek gets back on course.”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“Only then will her father’s geas allow her to turn her ingenuity to more urgent priorities—such as saving herself from her stepmother’s murderous attention, partying with cute boy, and performing in Dracula at Whitby.”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason. —John Harington (16th century)”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“making possible huge economies of scale in the application of force majeure. (Subjects whose mind-bogglingly vast numbers beggar Agent First’s imagination: it makes no sense, who needs that many slaves?)”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs .”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“and she has yet to see any eunuchs or freemartins at all”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“This compares to a 202 base pair difference between us and Neanderthals,”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“you’ve got to learn to think like a state if you work in the Civil Service. Organizations are not human beings and they don’t obey the same priorities. They’re hives.”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks