Jon Courtenay Grimwood

Jon Courtenay Grimwood (born 1953) is a British science fiction and fantasy author. He writes also as Jonathan Grimwood (literary fiction) and Jack Grimwood (crime fiction and thrillers).

Jon Courtenay Grimwood

Quotes

Stamping Butterflies (2004)

All page numbers are from the trade paperback edition published by Bantam Spectra ISBN 0-553-38377-9

Nominated for the 2004 British Science Fiction Award

• He had been fighting with himself longer than he could remember and was still not sure who was winning.
  • Chapter 5 (p. 37)

• Immortality had been perfected, at least in its non-biological forms, but insufficient attention had been paid to the boredom of eternity and the corrosive nature of the ratchet effect which demanded ever sharper, stronger and more intense sensations to maintain something like the same level of satisfaction.
  Living forever turned out to be much like long-term sex, psychologically tricky; which was why what killed the original colonists was not hardship but boredom.
  • Chapter 10 (p. 71)

• Apparently this was a design flaw in the unaugmented human brain, a lagging of consciousness behind intent.
  • Chapter 16 (p. 106)

• The fifty-third Chuang Tzu wore the very first on his cloak as a diamond buckle. Every emperor became a diamond eventually. It was one of the few advantages of living as a carbon-based life form.
  • Chapter 25 (p. 157)

• Gene Newman was Catholic, although not so Catholic that he had more than two children.
  • Chapter 33 (p. 210)

• Inside every adult was a child, or so it is said. Professor Petra Mayer was different. Inside Petra Mayer was an impossibly beautiful, barefoot adolescent who wouldn’t have been seen dead giving her inner child the time of day.
  • Chapter 33 (p. 212)

• The third nightfall was less impressive than the second, which mirrored a rule Tris had already identified; new emotions devalued, going from intense through familiar to reach a kind of ghost state where one no longer really noticed them at all.
  • Chapter 37 (p. 237)

• Why would we do this? she asked, watching smoke trickle towards the ceiling. A whole world of rigid rules covering temperature, convection and Brownian motion all busily pretending to be truly chaotic.
  • Chapter 39 (pp. 246-247)

• “That’s impossible,” said Tris.
  “Most things are,” Luca said, “if you think about them for long enough.”
  • Chapter 40 (p. 254)

• But those would be lies and Tris never lied to herself. At least not more than was required to stay human or sane. Lying to others was different. That was what people like her did if they wanted to remain alive.
  • Chapter 40 (p. 257)

• “We’re getting old,” he said.
  “No,” said Paula Zarte. “You are. I’m just not as young as I was.”
  • Chapter 48 (p. 296)

• The thought came and went, more wish than thought. Maria wasn’t good at considering her own emotions. Most of the time the girl found it hard to believe that what she felt might matter.
  • Chapter 50 (p. 308)

• There was no way she could know, but Prisoner Zero asked anyway because he was talking to himself; which was all anyone ever did, it seemed to him, talk to themselves while half meanings and misunderstandings fed into the minds of those who thought they were listening.
  • Chapter 51 (pp. 318-319)

• “Any chance you own a hijab?”
  The answer was no, but Malika could borrow one. Come to that, she could steal one freshly washed off the wall behind her house and claim a sudden, God-inspired attack of modesty if she got caught. The old crows were quite stupid enough to believe that.
  • Chapter 53 (p. 323)