America hadn't really been suited for its long and tiresome role as the Last Superpower, the World's Policeman. As a patriotic American, Oscar was quite content to watch other people's military coming home in boxes for a while. The American national character wasn't suited for global police duties. It never had been. Tidy and meticulous people such as the Swiss and the Swedes were the types who made good cops. America was far better suited to be the World's Movie Star. The world's tequila-addled pro-league bowler. The world's acerbic, bipolar stand-up comedian. Anything but a somber and tedious nation of socially responsible centurions.

— Bruce Sterling

But the economy's out of control. Money just doesn't need human beings anymore. Most of us only get in the way.

— Bruce Sterling

Death defeats us in the end. But our children are our revenge against it.

— Bruce Sterling

«Eliza opened her furry black satchel. She pulled out a portable CD player. “GAV, look here. Once, I loved this machine. Because it plays all my CDs. But nobody buys music in the stores anymore! Even I don’t pay for music, and I’m rich! I’m carrying a zombie in my purse!”“Well, yes, that platform is obsolete now, but a new business model will arise for music.”“No it won’t! That’s a lie! Nobody will ever pay! The music business is the walking dead! Don’t lie to me.” Eliza stuffed her doomed device back in her furry purse. Gavin rubbed his chin. “Your Digital Native generation really has some issues.”»

— Bruce Sterling

«“Everybody is in trouble with my dad. My dad only sort of gets the Internet. My dad started looking up all his old enemies on Facebook. My dad picks big flame war fights. It’s like my dad just discovered that people can talk about politics without his permission. Facebook is like his new drug, he’s getting all sweaty and manic... Formally, is Facebook the work of the Devil? Google is ‘not evil,’ but nobody ever said that Facebook was ‘not evil.’”»

— Bruce Sterling

(He) mourned mankind, and the blindness of men, who thought that the Cosmos had rules and limits that would shelter them from their own freedom. There were no shelters. There were no final purposes. Futility, and freedom, were Absolute

— Bruce Sterling

I do have two data identities. I have my name, Bruce Sterling, which is my public name under which I write novels. Furthermore, I also have my other name, which is my legal name under which I own property and vote.

— Bruce Sterling

If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless.

— Bruce Sterling

If you don’t have a sense of wonder it’s like you’re dead inside. But your sense of wonder can be used to trick you. You can have a sense of wonder over a thing that’s basically a conjurer’s trick, or a con job, or a rip-off.

— Bruce Sterling

«I love both her and them. I have come to understand that she is what they are. A woman accepts a man, expecting that he will change. A man takes a woman, expecting that she will never change. They are both disappointed. Yet within this very disappointment is the primal source of all new men and all new women»

— Bruce Sterling