01UndatedThe more I write stories for young people, and the more young readers I meet, the more I'm struck by how much kids long to see themselves in stories. To see their identities and perspectives—their avatars—on the page. Not as issues to be addressed or as icons for social commentary, but simply as people who get to do cool things in amazing worlds. Yes, all the “issue” books are great and have a place in literature, but it's a different and wildly joyous gift to find yourself on the pages of an entertainment, experiencing the thrills and chills of a world more adventurous than our own.And when you see that as a writer, you quickly realize that you don't want to be the jerk who says to a young reader, “Sorry, kid. You don't get to exist in story; you're too different.” You don't want to be part of our present dystopia that tells kids that if they just stopped being who they are they could have a story written about them, too. That's the role of the bad guy in the dystopian stories, right? Given a choice, I'd rather be the storyteller who says every kid can have a chance to star.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
02UndatedThe problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
03UndatedYou couldn’t live close to war and not have it grab you eventually.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
04UndatedHell, we’re all bullet bait sooner or later. Doubt it makes much difference. You make it to sixteen, you’re a goddamn legend.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
05UndatedHer face was smeared with mud and blood and ash. Just another bit of debris in the wreckage of war.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
06UndatedMaggot twitch, some people called it. If you’d seen much of the war, you had it. Some more. Some less. But everybody had it.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
07UndatedMahlia… understood Doctor Mahfouz and his blind rush into the village. He wasn’t trying to change them. He wasn’t trying to save anyone. He was just trying to not be part of the sickness. Mahlia had thought he was stupid for walking straight into death, but now, as she lay against the pillar, she saw it differently. She thought she’d been surviving. She thought that she’d been fighting for herself. But all she’d done was create more killing, and in the end it had all led to this moment, where they bargained with a demon … not for their lives, but for their souls” (p. 403)Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
08UndatedWe are nature. Our every tinkering is nature, our every biological striving. We are what we are, and the world is ours. We are its gods. Your only difficulty is your unwillingness to unleash your potential fully upon it.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
09UndatedPain held no terror for him. Pain was, if not friend, then family, something he had grown up with in his crèche, learning to respect but never yield to. Pain was simply a message, telling him which limbs he could still use to slaughter his enemies, how far he could still run, and what his chances were in the next battle.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
10UndatedI'm a chess piece. A pawn,' she said. 'I can be sacrificed, but I cannot be captured. To be captured would be the end of the game.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
11UndatedBut then, that was the problem with pretty toy stitches. When real life got hold of them, they always tore out.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
12UndatedBelieving is for Santa Claus, right? It's for Tooth Fairies. It's for your boyfriend when he says he's never met anyone like you and wants to feel you up. That's believing. It's for little kids. Belief. You believe in God?Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
13UndatedBelief.” He snorted. “I could kiss a thousand crosses. Fucking belief.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
14UndatedFamily. It was just a word…Could see its letters all strung together. But it was a symbol, too. And people thought they knew what it meant…It was a thing everyone had an opinion about—that it was all you had when you didn’t have anything else, that family was there, that blood was thicker than water, whatever. But when Nailer thought about it, most of these words and ideas just seemed like good excuses for people to behave badly and get away with it. Family wasn’t more reliable than marriages or friendships…maybe less…The blood bond was nothing. It was the people that mattered. If they covered your back, and you covered theirs, then maybe that was worth calling family.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
16UndatedSome things, it was better not to think about. It just made you mad and angry.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
18UndatedA gamble. Everything was a damn gamble. Betting against luck and the Fates, again and again, and again. She kept walking, waiting for the bullet.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
21UndatedAt root, I think that any given technology (think nuclear power, gunpowder, the written word...) has the potential to improve our lives, wound it, and also to create unexpected accidents. It's not the technology that's the problem, it's us, the users. However angelic or demonic, or thoughtful or thoughtless we happen to be is then amplified by our technologies.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
22UndatedThe Drowned Cities hadn’t always been broken. People broke it. First they called people traitors and said they didn’t belong. Said these people were good and those people were evil, and it kept going, because people always responded, and pretty soon the place was a roaring hell because no one took responsibility for what they did, and how it would drive others to respond.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
23UndatedTool wondered if the girl was going mad. It happened to people. Sometimes they saw too much and their minds went away. They lost the will to survive. They curled up and surrendered to madness.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
24UndatedNo one else could see all the bodies she’d left behind, but they were there, looking at her. Or maybe that was just her, looking at herself, and not liking what she saw. Knowing she could never escape her own judging gaze.Paolo Bacigalupi / quote ↗
