Quotes
“My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year. It's like I was raising chickens inside of me. The chickens lay their eggs and the eggs hatch into other chickens, which then lay eggs.”
Mediocrity is a constant, as one Russian writer put it. Russians have a way with aphorisms. They probably spend all winter thinking them up.
Nobody does emotional distancing from reprehensible behavior better than the British, after all.
p. 49
Show me a person who doesn’t have ongoing problems and I’ll show you an AI.
p. 17
It was obvious who the Elders were. Important-looking men wearing important clothes being looked at by everyone else because they were important.
p. 178
One should never break a sacred law when under the influence of psychoactive substances.
p. 66
It’s no easier to climb down than it is to go up. It just torments a different set of muscles.
p. 172
After a short flurry of national and international concern over the “death of the Sun,” the human race settled down to solving the insoluble problem in the best way that they knew—they ignored it and hoped it would go away.
p. 11
“Are you willing to allow other the same right to their beliefs?”
“If their beliefs don’t hurt others and, when I feel the need, I am allowed to call them stupid in my mind, then yes.”
p. 110
“The National Hot Air Museum is just down the road a piece,” he added. “Better known by its branch names: the Capitol and the White House.”
p. 311
Tip: utopian and floral town names are inversely proportional to their hellholishness.
p. 394
The end of the world turned out to be something I preferred to fantasize about rather than experience.
p. 166
