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

— 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

I'm not proud of it, but I'm a great liar when I travel. I smile and lie, and things are smooth.

— Paolo Bacigalupi

I'm particularly interested in black swan events: unprecedented surprises that destroy the conventional wisdom about how the world works.

— 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’d be dead, if there was such a thing as the Scavenge God, or his scales. And that goes double for the Deepwater priests. They’re all full of it. Nothing balances out.

— Paolo Bacigalupi

I was interested in political failure here in the U.S. The way we're failing to work together to solve even our smallest problems, let alone the complex ones.

— Paolo Bacigalupi

Jesus walked on water, so maybe he makes aquifers, too.

— Paolo Bacigalupi

Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way if justice.

— Paolo Bacigalupi

Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way of justice.

— 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