Quotes by Paolo Bacigalupi

About Paolo Bacigalupi:

Paolo Tadini Bacigalupi is an American science fiction and fantasy writer.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The 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 s...

Paolo Bacigalupi

Some things, it was better not to think about. It just made you mad and angry.

Paolo Bacigalupi

It’s still a load. If there was balance, the soldier boys would all be dead, and we’d be sitting pretty in the middle of the Drowned Cities, shipping marble and steel and copper and getting paid Red Chinese for every kilo. We’d be rich and they...

Paolo Bacigalupi

They’d blame a castoff just for breathing. You could be good as gold and they’d still blame you.

Paolo Bacigalupi

A 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

No 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

The thought burrowed into her heart as darkness fell. It coiled in her guts as she wedged herself amongst the boughs of a tree to sleep. And in the morning, it woke with her and clung to her back, riding on her shoulders as she climbed down, hungry a...

Paolo Bacigalupi

Tool 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

Never beg for mercy. Accept that you have failed. Begging is for dogs and humans.

Paolo Bacigalupi

Pain 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, ...

Paolo Bacigalupi

But then, that was the problem with pretty toy stitches. When real life got hold of them, they always tore out.

Paolo Bacigalupi

Suicide is not something I owe you or yours.

Paolo Bacigalupi

The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders.

Paolo Bacigalupi

You couldn’t live close to war and not have it grab you eventually.

Paolo Bacigalupi

Hell, 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

Maggot 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

Her face was smeared with mud and blood and ash. Just another bit of debris in the wreckage of war.

Paolo Bacigalupi

Mahlia… 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 in...

Paolo Bacigalupi

Family. 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...

Paolo Bacigalupi

I'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

Author Bio

  • NamePaolo Bacigalupi
  • DescriptionAmerican science fiction and fantasy writer
  • BornAugust 6, 1972
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist
  • WorksThe Windup Girl; Ship Breaker
  • AwardsNebula Award; Compton Crook Award