Official Michael Marshall Smith Web site — Michael Marshall Smith

"One of the big things about being a man, shed noted, was that being good, doing the work, wasnt enough. It had to be generally acknowledged that here you were, damn well seeing to business."

"My limited experience of such things told me that you get closest to the truth by not giving it advance warning that youre coming after it."

"All the difference in the world are as nothing compared to this: the difference between being you and being me. It makes the chasms between gods and men, between men and women, between dead and alive, seem almost trivial.You are you. She is someone else. Between lie the stars."

"Must be a strange life these days, for toes. A simple twist of fate and they could have been the big boys, the much-feted opposables, spending their days busy carrying things and controlling machinery and touching interesting parts of peoples bodies. They dont get to do any of that. Instead they just get pushed into small, dark leather places and forgotten about, and when theyre let free they often seem little more than a strange fringe on the ends of your feet."

"It had taken me a while to work out what I got from this. You didnt watch in the hope of seeing something exciting. Just the opposite. You watched because the very lack of discernible activity, of presented subject matter, made the view itself seem more real. If you watch something in particular, all you see is that thing happening. You see the moment, the event, and you are distracted from the long, slow tide of eventlessness underlying it. If you watch nothing, then you see everything. You see the thing as it is."

"It was dry and cold, not bitter, but with the kind of steady chill that makes it hard to remember being any other way. I tried to imagine people living out here once, and couldnt. It must have been long ago. The land felt like it didnt want anyone bothering it anymore."