“Released, I am a spear in the hands of the sun.”
―
Arkady Martine,
A Memory Called Empire
“So much of who we are is what we remember and retell,” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“It was like a Russian party, Arkady thought. People got drunk, recklessly confessed their love, spilled their festering dislike, had hysterics, marched out, were dragged back in and revived with brandy. It wasn't a French salon.” ― Martin Cruz Smith
“The problem with sending messages was that people responded to them, which meant one had to write more messages in reply.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever fallen in love with a culture that was devouring their own.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe; it gives life back to those who no longer exist.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“Histories are always worse by the time they get written down.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“Nothing touched by Empire stays clean.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“Poetry is for the desperate, and for people who have grown old enough to have something to say.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“Proust said that you could seduce any woman if you were willing to sit and listen to her complain until four in the morning.” ― Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park
“Be a mirror, she told herself again. Be a mirror when you meet a knife; be a mirror when you meet a stone.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“She’s a barbarian, but don’t hold it against her. She’s brilliant.” ― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace
“Expansion History, and you came to the description of the triple sunrises you can see when you're hanging in Lsel Station's Lagrange point, and you thought, At last, there are words for how I feel, and they aren't even in my language―>Yes, Mahit says. Yes, she does. That ache: longing and a violent sort of self-hatred, that only made the longing sharper.We felt that way.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“Stalin gothic was not so much an architectural style as a form of worship. Elements of Greek, French, Chinese and Italian masterpieces had been thrown into the barbarian wagon and carted to Moscow and the Master Builder Himself, who had piled them one on the other into the cement towers and blazing torches of His rule, monstrous skyscrapers of ominous windows, mysterious crenellations and dizzying towers that led to the clouds, and yet still more rising spires surmounted by ruby stars that at night glowed like His eyes. After His death, His creations were more embarrassment than menace, too big for burial with Him, so they stood, one to each part of town, great brooding, semi-Oriental temples, not exorcised but used.” ― Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park
“But the habits of memory created all kinds of false harbors.” ― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace
“A MIND is a sort of star-chart in reverse: an assembly of memory, conditioned response, and past action held together in a network of electricity and endocrine signaling, rendered down to a single moving point of consciousness” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“You pump the dead full of chemicals and refuse to let anything rot—people or ideas or … or bad poetry, of which there is in fact some, even in perfectly metrical verse,” said Mahit. “Forgive me if I disagree with you on emulation. Teixcalaan is all about emulating what should already be dead.” “Are you Yskandr, or are you Mahit?” Three Seagrass asked, and that did seem to be the crux of it: Was she Yskandr, without him? Was there even such a thing as Mahit Dzmare, in the context of a Teixcalaanli city, a Teixcalaanli language, Teixcalaanli politics infecting her all through, like an imago she wasn’t suited for, tendrils of memory and experience growing into her like the infiltrates of some fast-growing fungus.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“It is the minds of a people that have to stay free. Bodies die, or suffer, or are imprisoned. Memory lasts.” ― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace
“I make friends with terribly interesting people with terribly complicated problems.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“So much of who we are is what we remember and retell,” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“It was like a Russian party, Arkady thought. People got drunk, recklessly confessed their love, spilled their festering dislike, had hysterics, marched out, were dragged back in and revived with brandy. It wasn't a French salon.” ― Martin Cruz Smith
“The problem with sending messages was that people responded to them, which meant one had to write more messages in reply.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever fallen in love with a culture that was devouring their own.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe; it gives life back to those who no longer exist.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“Histories are always worse by the time they get written down.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“Nothing touched by Empire stays clean.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“Poetry is for the desperate, and for people who have grown old enough to have something to say.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“Proust said that you could seduce any woman if you were willing to sit and listen to her complain until four in the morning.” ― Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park
“Be a mirror, she told herself again. Be a mirror when you meet a knife; be a mirror when you meet a stone.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“She’s a barbarian, but don’t hold it against her. She’s brilliant.” ― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace
“Expansion History, and you came to the description of the triple sunrises you can see when you're hanging in Lsel Station's Lagrange point, and you thought, At last, there are words for how I feel, and they aren't even in my language―>Yes, Mahit says. Yes, she does. That ache: longing and a violent sort of self-hatred, that only made the longing sharper.We felt that way.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“Stalin gothic was not so much an architectural style as a form of worship. Elements of Greek, French, Chinese and Italian masterpieces had been thrown into the barbarian wagon and carted to Moscow and the Master Builder Himself, who had piled them one on the other into the cement towers and blazing torches of His rule, monstrous skyscrapers of ominous windows, mysterious crenellations and dizzying towers that led to the clouds, and yet still more rising spires surmounted by ruby stars that at night glowed like His eyes. After His death, His creations were more embarrassment than menace, too big for burial with Him, so they stood, one to each part of town, great brooding, semi-Oriental temples, not exorcised but used.” ― Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park
“But the habits of memory created all kinds of false harbors.” ― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace
“A MIND is a sort of star-chart in reverse: an assembly of memory, conditioned response, and past action held together in a network of electricity and endocrine signaling, rendered down to a single moving point of consciousness” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“You pump the dead full of chemicals and refuse to let anything rot—people or ideas or … or bad poetry, of which there is in fact some, even in perfectly metrical verse,” said Mahit. “Forgive me if I disagree with you on emulation. Teixcalaan is all about emulating what should already be dead.” “Are you Yskandr, or are you Mahit?” Three Seagrass asked, and that did seem to be the crux of it: Was she Yskandr, without him? Was there even such a thing as Mahit Dzmare, in the context of a Teixcalaanli city, a Teixcalaanli language, Teixcalaanli politics infecting her all through, like an imago she wasn’t suited for, tendrils of memory and experience growing into her like the infiltrates of some fast-growing fungus.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
“It is the minds of a people that have to stay free. Bodies die, or suffer, or are imprisoned. Memory lasts.” ― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace
“I make friends with terribly interesting people with terribly complicated problems.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
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