Author: Charles Stross

Cites

• Franz Kafka (1)
  • IN: Glasshouse (2006) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: "This apparatus," said the Officer, grasping a connecting road and leaning against it, "is our previous Commandant's invention... Have you heard of our previous Commandant? No? Well, I'm not claiming too much when I say that the organization of the entire penal colony is his work. We, his friends, already knew at the time of his death that the administration of the colony was so self-contained that even if his successor had a thousand new plans in mind he would not be able to alter anything of the old plan, at least not for several years... It's a shame that you didn't know the old Commandant!"
    FROM: In the Penal Colony, (1919), Short Story, Czech Republic
• Adolf Hitler (1)
  • IN: Glasshouse (2006) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Who still talks nowadays about the Armenians?
    FROM: NULL, (1939), Speech, Germany
• Laurence Peter (1)
  • IN: The Apocalypse Codex (2012) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
    FROM: The Peter Principle, (1969), Book, Canada/US
• Prince Otto von Bismarck (1)
  • IN: The Delirium Brief (2017) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, Germany
• Pat Robertson (1)
  • IN: Rule 34 (2011) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: In Scotland, you can't believe how strong the homosexuals are.
    FROM: BBC News, (1999), Article, UK
• David Graeber (1)
  • IN: Neptune's Brood (2013) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: And what of the Grail, that mysterious object that all the knights-errant were utlimately seeking? Oddly enough, Richard Wagner, composer of the opera Parzifal, first suggested that the Grail was a symbol inspired by the new forms of finance. Where earlier epic heroes sought after, and fought over, piles of real, concrete fold and silver - the Nibelung's hoard - these new ones, born of the new commercial economy, pursued purely abstract forms of value. No one, after all knew precisely what the Grail was... Marc Shell even suggested that it would best be conceived as a blank check, the ultimate financial abstraction.
    FROM: Debt: The First 5,000 Years, (2011), Book, US-England