Cellphones Quotes

Hey," said Jace. who was sitting on an overturned speaker, looking at his cellphone, "do you want to see a photo of Alec and Magnus in Berlin?" "Not really," said Simon. "Magnus is wearing lederhosen." "And yet, still no.

The moment we stepped out into the hall, Cam's apartment door flung open. Ollie appeared, a cellphone in one hand and Raphael wiggling in the other. "Smile!" he shouted as he snapped a picture on his phone. "It's like my two kids are going to prom.

If god meant for people to talk into cellphones, he would've put our mouths on the side of our heads.

Remember how, back in 1990, if you used a cellphone in public you looked like a total asshole? We're all assholes now.

You know, a cell phone's like a guy; if you don't plug him in every night, charge him good, you got nothing at all.

Cell phones are so convenient that they're an inconvenience.

People who smile while they are alone used to be called insane, until we invented smartphones and social media.

I tracked your cellphone, Anastasia.

Alain Badiou was once seated amongst the public in a room where I was delivering a talk, when his cellphone (which, to add insult to injury, was mine -- I had lent it to him) all of a sudden started to ring. Instead of turning it off, he gently interrupted me and asked me if I could talk more softly, so that he could hear his interlocutor more clearly . . . If this was not an act of true friendship, I do not know what friendship is. So, this book is dedicated to Alain Badiou.

To be honest, I think cell phones were invented by the devil.

Some very considerable part of the gestural language of public places that had once belonged to cigarettes now belonged to phones.

I don’t agree on spending time with someone who is more attached to his cell phone than he is to me.

We have too many cellphones. We've got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.

He went over to the leathers and picked them up. Nice Catholic boy like him didn't know much about BDSM, but it looked like he was going to learn firsthand. Taking out his cellphone, he hit V, but didn't expect an answer. He guessed GPS was going to have to come in handy once again.

We are wasting our youth holding cold devices while we should be holding one another’s warm hands.

We are loved way more by some of the people who have not contacted us in the last twelve or so months than we are loved by some of those who contact us every twelve or so days … or hours.

The contemporary sedentary is someone who feels at home everywhere, thanks to cellphones, and the nomad is someone who does not feel at home anywhere, someone who is excluded, ostracized.

It's easier for a rich man to ride that camel through the eye of a needle directly into the Kingdom of Heaven, than for some of us to give up our cell phone.

Right, my phone. When these things first appeared, they were so cool. Only when it was too late did people realize they are as cool as electronic tags on remand prisoners.

Look at the world and think about a catastrophic disaster where the cell phone towers went dead. How would you ever be able to 'TEXT" your next door neighbor to see if they were okay

As I ran water to wash my hands, my earbud fell out of my ear and went down the drain. "Crap!" I hauled my cellphone out of my bag and texted Ranger. Bad news. Your earbud just went down the drain in the ladies room. It was only a matter of time, he textd back.

Technology offers us a unique opportunity, though rarely welcome, to practice patience.

A smartphone is an addictive device which traps a soul into a lifeless planet full of lives

HOME is where the heart is, but today, the PHONE is where the Heart is!!!

I have videos of Grandma on my cellphone. In one I asked her what will happen to her body after she dies. She says ahhhhh, my body! My body will become energy that will light your path.

Yeah, I know, the Mars thing. I've been meaning to talk to you about that. When did you get the idea it would be cute to carve my dad's cell-phone number on a rock in the middle of Syrtis Major? He hates it when people call me on his phone." Kit gave Nita a resigned look. "Sorry," he said, "I couldn't resist.

Suit yourself.’ Sadie shouldered her pack, then helped Annabeth up. ‘You say Carter drew a hieroglyph on your boyfriend’s hand. All well and good, but I’d rather stay in touch with you directly.’ Annabeth smirked. ‘You’re right. Can’t trust boys to communicate.’ They exchanged cell-phone numbers. ‘Just don’t call unless it’s urgent,’ Annabeth warned. ‘Cell-phone activity attracts monsters.’ Sadie looked surprised. ‘Really? Never noticed. I suppose I shouldn’t send you any funny-face selfies on Instagram, then.’ ‘Probably not.’ ‘Well, until next time.’ Sadie threw her arms round Annabeth.

The phone is an instrument of intrusion into order. It is a threat to control. Just when you think you are alone and safe, the call could come that changes your life. Or someone else's. It makes the same flat, mechanical noise for everyone and gives no clues what's waiting there on the other end of the line. You can never be too careful.

Another note to self; turn cellphone to silent when you’re trying to be sneaky.

For the last fifty years or so, The Novel’s demise has been broadcast on an almost weekly basis. Yet it strikes me that whatever happens, however else the geography of the imagination might modify in the future in, say, the digital ether, The Novel will continue to survive for some long time to come because it is able to investigate and cherish two things that film, music, painting, dance, architecture, drama, podcasts, cellphone exchanges, and even poetry can’t in a lush, protracted mode. The first is the intricacy and beauty of language—especially the polyphonic qualities of it to which Bakhtin first drew our attention. And the second is human consciousness. What other art form allows one to feel we are entering and inhabiting another mind for hundreds of pages and several weeks on end?

Here is my favorite biblical direction: Be not afraid. It's truly the secret of life. Fear is what stunts our growth, narrows our ambitions, kills our dreams. So fear not. ...You are surely afraid: of leaving what you know, of seeking what you want, of taking the wrong path, of failing the right one. But you can't allow any of that to warp your life. You must have the strength to say no to the wrong things and to embrace the right ones, even if you are the only one who seems to know the difference, even if you find the difference hard to calculate. Acts of bravery don't always take place on battle fields. They can take place in your heart, when you have the courage to honor your character, your intellect, your inclinations, and yes, your soul by listening to its clean, clear voice of direction instead of following the muddied messages of a timid world. So carry your courage in an easily accessible place, the way you do your cellphone or your wallet. You may still falter or fail, but you will always know that you pushed hard and aimed high. Take a leap of faith. Fear not. Courage is the ultimate career move.

Hazel had promised to visit again with Arion. The mermaids had written their phone numbers in waterproof ink on Hazel’s arm so that she could keep in touch. Leo didn’t even want to ask how mermaids got cell-phone coverage in the middle of the Atlantic.

As long as you have a Cell Phone you're never alone

Nature's what it's all about, but our people have been brainwashed into thinking that life is a cell phone against your head and the TV on a beer commercial with hot chicks.

Nothing is one hundred percent reliable this side of paradise, except that your cell-phone provider will never fulfill the service promises that you were naïve enough to believe.

All this electromagnetic pollution in the air from the Internet and cell phones, it cuts you off from God.

Remember when only a few people had mobile phones. Generally regarded as an object of derision, you would occasionally see business types clutching those ridiculous grey bricks to their faces and mutter to yourself 'what a prick.' Nowadays, an eyebrow hardly even flutters when we see a ten-year-old child happily texting away. You probably wouldn't notice anyway; you'd be too busy downloading an app that could definitively pinpoint who it was that had just farted in your tube carriage.

What most people don’t consider is that death is often random and cruel. It doesn’t care if you’ve been kind all your life. Or if you’ve eaten healthily, exercised often, and always worn a seat belt or a helmet. It doesn’t care that a loved one left behind might spend the rest of their lives replaying events in their head, tormented by the words “if only.” People tell themselves they’ve got plenty of time, until they’re at the mercy of a careless action—a driver on their cellphone, a neighbor who left a candle burning. And by then, it’s too late.

Texting is not talking and a phone is not a friend.

I’m just trying to live my life, but it seems as if sadness always piles itself up around me. It’s in my bed, the toothbrush in my bathroom, and the memory of my cellphone. Over the past few years, I’ve wanted to move on, I’ve wanted to take hold of something I couldn’t reach. What that is, I have no idea. Not knowing where such obsessive thoughts were coming from, I simply drowned myself in my work. Then one day I realized that my heart was withering, and in it there was nothing but pain. And that my beliefs, that I once held so passionately, had completely disappeared.

In general, we want to take the easy way out, but what makes us happy is doing the thing that’s a little bit difficult. What’s happening with our cellphones is that we put a thing in our pocket that’s with us all the time that always offers an easy thing to do, rather than the important thing.

To my surprise, Brooke smiled, and I realized that even though two of the other teams had managed to bug their marks' cell phones, the information Tara and I had received might just prove it self to be even more useful. Take that Chloe!

Selfies are disgusting.

What I like best about cell phones is that I can talk to myself in the car now and nobody thinks it's weird.

Ever wondered why front camera of cellphones makes people look better while the rear camera makes them look how they are? Because when you click picture using front camera, you see yourself on screen, and that's how you should look at yourself, a better version of yourself. Whereas, the rear camera shows how other's see you. With your flaws and qualities. No added layer to hide or enhance your ownself. This is how you should learn to overcome your flaws and better your qualities.

People earnestly say to me here, 'Mr Knight, we have cellphones now, and you're going to really enjoy them.' That's their enticement for me to rejoin society. 'You're going to love it,' they say. I have no desire. And what about a text message? Isn't that just using a telephone as a telegraph? We're going backwards.

How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip, and compulsive cell-phone use, simply because we don't do that thing that our hearts, our inner genius, is calling us to?

All cell phones in the air 'cause I want to see you guys shine.

No cell phones?” Macey said as if we’d just told her all students were required to shave their heads and live on bread and water.

Mum's mobile was the most immoblie cell phone in the world. It often lived on the top of the bookshelf closest to the front door. It was there so she'd see it before she left the house. The trouble was, Mum was alwayd leaving the house in a mad rush and the mobile stayed put.

While India is undoubtedly complex, there still are some simple truths that managers have to accept. Indian consumers are very value-conscious. They may be poor, but they are not backward. Even in media-dark India, consumers are well informed. They are not overwhelmed by Western brands. And they can make a difference to the global positions of individual firms. Consider cellphones. The Indian market is growing at the rate of 6 million new subscribers per month.

What's making us uncomfortable...is this feeling of losing control - a feeling that instantiates itself in a dozen different ways each day, such as when we tune out with our phone during our child's bath time, or lose our ability to enjoy a nice moment without a frantic urge to document it for a virtual audience.

Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we’re too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cellphone. STEVEN SPIELBERG

His cellphone alarm beeped. Now. Who would he nail? A single target tonight. So, a single bullet in the gun. David put the crosshairs on one of the guys walking out of the Quick Trip. Tall man, longish hair, scruffy beard. The guy pulled keys from his pocket and the crosshairs settled on his face. What was next? David pulled the trigger. The back of the guy’s head exploded. A massive wound. The guy’s friend looked around. The pregnant woman screamed. The black guy ran. The girls hugged each other. David pulled the trunk lid back down. Clicked and locked. A gentle walkway wound around the mall. Sol slowly drove away. David’s breaths came fast, almost pants. He then took his black pants off and removed his soiled underwear. He reached in the plastic bag for the fresh pair. Changing in the trunk of a dark and hot and moving car was difficult. Just part of the job now. When he pulled the trigger, he orgasmed. Always did. David slowed his breathing. Taylor series for ex = 1 + x + X2 / 2! + X3 / 3! etc. Yes, that was better. He closed his eyes and let go of the rope and let the rifle roll to one side. That guy’s head exploded. They drove away, below the speed limit. Didn’t want to attract attention. No need to, in no hurry.

I would be utterly emabarrassed to have others around me hear my half of what can only be described as pedestrian. "Yes, the elevator has just pulled up to the 16th floor." Do these people have the ability to go, for say, an eight- or ten-minute stretch without being in contact with someone else? What are they afraid of? Confronting their own thoughts?

Classical drama depends crucially on people not having cell phones.

And, sure, fine, I do check my phone about every two minutes, but so do a lot of people, and it's better than smoking, that's what I say. It's the new, lung-safe cigarette.

A telephone connects more than just people.

cellphone in his luxurious Manhattan apartment, on the last day they spent together. Jett had been sitting in the chair opposite from the

I spend a hundred and fifty bucks on a cellphone that has more features than even Gene Roddenberry could have dreamt of.

Take my television. Take my computer. Take my cellphone. Take my music. But don't ever touch my books.

We inculcate in our children the sensibilities of raccoons, a fascination with shiny objects and an appetite for garbage, and then carp about 'the texting generation' as if thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds who couldn't boil an egg are capable of creating a culture. They grow on what we feed them. It has never been otherwise. The only thing that changes is the food.

Paying attention takes time and focus—two things we’re short on these days. Sitting next to each other while surfing the Web on separate laptops doesn’t cut it. Neither does dinner if your eyes are on your cellphone as much as they’re on your partner. A neglected spouse might not clamor for your attention as aggressively as a pet, but they need the dose of love just as much.

I always found it so ironic, how the people from the past would do anything to see what happened everywhere else in the world that they lost so much of their own life watching this little screen.

PROPENSITY OF THE YOUNG TO QUESTION AUTHORITY AND challenge power is now amplified by the More and Mobility revolutions. Not only are there more people than ever under thirty, but they have more—prepaid calling-cards, radios, TVs, cellphones, computers, and access to the Internet as well as to travel and communication possibilities with others like them at home and around the world. They are also more mobile than ever.

Honey, have you seen my measuring tape?” “I think it’s in that drawer in the kitchen with the scissors, matches, bobby pins, Scotch tape, nail clippers, barbecue tongs, garlic press, extra buttons, old birthday cards, soy sauce packets thick rubber bands, stack of Christmas napkins, stained take-out menus, old cell-phone chargers, instruction booklet for the VCR, some assorted nickels, an incomplete deck of cards, extra chain links for a watch, a half-finished pack of cough drops, a Scrabble piece I found while vacuuming, dead batteries we aren’t fully sure are dead yet, a couple screws in a tiny plastic bag left over from the bookshelf, that lock with the forgotten combination, a square of carefully folded aluminum foil, and expired pack of gum, a key to our old house, a toaster warranty card, phone numbers for unknown people, used birthday candles, novelty bottle openers, a barbecue lighter, and that one tiny little spoon.” “Thanks, honey.” AWESOME!

The extraordinary triumph of the cellphone among India’s poor stemmed from its ability to enable a most mundane human need, which is to chat with other people. And when the poor chat, it is not always about curing a child of diarrhea.

You have not had any privacy since the first day you owned your first cell phone. They can track everything. They can hear recordings of anything you have ever said on your cell. And read everything you ever read, and everything you ever typed. And see every location you've ever been to. That's just how cells work. Your privacy is a willful illusion.

I'm fine. I'm fine, he says, and fine, fine repeats in his head as he escapes back into the chill. Around him, a spin of bodies in dark coats, tapping thumbs on pads, pressing phones to heads, settling buds into ear canals, projecting an invisible shield of music as they move through the crowd, digital companionship warmer than the bodies around them. Every soul on the street is sunk within its body. Sometimes Bit imagines that he, alone, bears witness to the world.

It's not that you can't get things done with the use of a cell phone; indeed you can get a lot of things done. However, the nature of what you get done is highly skewed. Just as the man with only a hammer sees everything as nails, the incessant cell phone user accomplishes a variety of tasks, understandably enough, that accrue directly to having a cell phone.

In their phones were antennas, and these antennas sniffed out an invisible world, as if by magic, a world that was all around them, and also nowhere, transporting them to places distant and near, and to places that had never been and would never be.

The civil rights movement, legislation, and milestone court decisions of the 1950s and ’60s produced remarkable changes and ended or ramped down centuries of explicit, statutory discrimination. But real integration was not one of the accomplishments. The civil rights movement ended in a kind of negotiated compromise. Black Americans were granted legal equality, while white America was allowed to nurture and maintain an illusion of innocence, even as it continued to live in almost complete separation. Black America always saw the continuing schism. But white America has traditionally been free to ignore and be untroubled by it and to believe it had reached the “postracial” stage of its otherwise proud history. That was until cellphones and the Internet came along.

As every economist knows, third-party transactions are always more expensive, whether the third party is an insurer or the government...Third-party transactions are always inflationary. So let's return as much of daily life as possible to a two-party system--buyer and seller. You'll be amazed how affordable it is. Compare cellphone and laptop and portable music systems prices with what they were in the Eighties, and then ask yourself how it would have turned out with a government-regulated system of electronic insurance plans.

Some children are threatened with loss of privileges such as money, cell phones, cars or even eviction from home if they do not 'toe-the-line' and 'act straight'. I don't think parents who do such things consider for a moment the kind of emotional damage they are doing to their children - or thinking beyond their own feelings about the situation - which will not change or go away simply because of their denial.

how reality feels. People addicted to busyness, people who don’t just use their cell phones in public but display in every nuance of cell-phone deportment their sense of throbbing connectedness to Something Important—these people would suffocate like fish on a dock if they were cut off from the Flow of Events they have conspired with their fellows to create. To these plugged-in players, the rest of us look like zombies, coasting on fumes. For

Work hard. Work dirty. Choose your favourite spade and dig a small, deep hole; located deep in the forest or a desolate area of the desert or tundra. Then bury your cellphone and then find a hobby. Actually, 'hobby' is not a weighty enough word to represent what I am trying to get across. Let's use 'discipline' instead. If you engage in a discipline or do something with your hands, instead of kill time on your phone device, then you have something to show for your time when you're done. Cook, play music, sew, carve, shit - bedazzle! Or, maybe not bedazzle... The arrhythmic is quite simple, instead of playing draw something, fucking draw something! Take the cleverness you apply to words with friends and utilise it to make some kick ass cornbread, corn with friends - try that game. I'm here to tell you that we've been duped on a societal level. My favourite writer, Wendell Berry writes on this topic with great eloquence, he posits that we've been sold a bill of goods claiming that work is bad. That sweating and working especially if soil or saw dust is involved are beneath us. Our population especially the urbanites, has largely forgotten that working at a labour that one loves is actually a privilege.

Interrogate them,” said Ferris. “Send them to Gitmo. Send them to Hani. Whatever.” “Well, sure, interrogation,” said Hoffman. “That helps. But that’s not the real pop. Even if the guy we capture doesn’t say shit, the bad guys have to assume he has blabbed. So they’ll have to change their cell-phone numbers, and their Internet

I could have been killed, and their response is to film me?...In that moment, the myth that every time your picture is taken, a part of your soul is stolen strikes me as a certain truth, because I feel my spirit being sucked out of me, into hundreds of all-seeing lenses that simply want to capture my fear, my anger, my performance.

We, and the universe we live in, produce and operate in a sea of natural and unnatural electrical and magnetic fields. The earth, for example, pulses at about 10 Hz, like a small engine. Our bodies, as you may remember from chapter 1, are really electromagnetic machines. We simply can't move a muscle or produce a thought without an electrical impulse - and wherever there is electricity, a magnetic field is also produced, which is why we link the two together into one word: electromagnetic." Ann Louise Gittleman

Then my cell phone buzzes again. I can’t quite get it out of my pocket because my arm is so bloody. Astley reaches down and pulls it out for me. “You’re blushing,” he says. “You just reached in my pocket. It’s kind of intimate.” He smiles a wicked smile and hands me the phone. “There is candy in here as well.” “Skittles,” I explain. “I like them.

Do we have to stare death in the face to make us stand up and confront Resistance? Does Resistance have to cripple and disfigure our lives before we wake up to its existence? How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip, and compulsive cell-phone use, simply because we don't do that

That we are horny creatures is proven by the fact that the invention of video calling found us already having sex over the phone.

Nothing was a natural predator of productive fiction writing like the cell phone. Ditto the laptop. As she had well learned, the laptop could destroy a day.

I’d made “Fever” Mom’s ring tone because the song was about getting the flu from being too close to someone. I thought it was a good choice because she holds me tight and kisses me all the time and she’s always blowing her nose on me and it makes me sick and gives me fever—but now I wasn’t sure it was the right ring tone after all. I didn’t want to have a sexy ring tone for Mom on my cellphone!

So you got Black Lives Matter up your ass, every citizen a journalist with a cell-phone camera at the ready, and you go to work each day with the whole world thinking you’re a murdering racist. Okay,

His name was Victor, we learned, and the background wallpaper on Victor's cellphone was an Aztec image, he told us, so imbued with powers that just the contemplation of said image made you smarter. He was convinced that world events were orchestrated by complicated and persistent conspiracies.He took out a dollar bill to show us how the Illuminati communicated with one another. 'Why would a secret society lay out their plans on common currency?' I asked. He nodded like he'd anticipated the question. 'To display the reach of their power.' I envied Victor's certainty, the idiot syntax of the righteous. This belief--that the world had a visible order, and all we had to do was look for the symbols--as if evil were a code that could be cracked. He kept talking. His teeth wet from drink, the gray blush of a dead molar. He had plenty of conspiracies to explain to us in detail, plenty of inside information he could clue us into. He spoke of 'getting on the level." Of 'hidden frequencies' and 'shadow governments.

Elizabeth ran her finger along the windowsill, gathering dust. The view was almost exactly the same as from her own bedroom, only a few degrees shifted. She could still see the Rosens' place, with its red door and folding shutters, and the Martinez house, with its porch swing and the dog bowl. She'd heard once that what made you a real New Yorker was when you could remember back three laters -- the place on the corner that had been a bakery and then a barbershop before it was a cell-phone store, or the restaurant that had been Italian, then Mexican, then Cuban. The city was a palimpsest, a Mod Podged pileup or old signage and other people's failures. Newcomers saw only what was in front of them, but people who had been there long enough were always looking at two or three other places simultaneously. The IRT, Canal Jeans, the Limelight. So much of the city she'd fallen in love with was gone, but then again, that's how it worked. It was your job to remember. At least the bridges were still there. Some things were too heavy to take down.

Technology and its isolating effects Technology in the form of computers, cellphones, and the Internet have increased productivity, access to information, and the ability to communicate. Personally, we love computers — they've enabled us to write more and to research with greater ease than ever. Sometimes we spend days at a time holed up in our offices, banging away on the computer and not speaking to other living beings. Yet, because we don't want to lose real, face-to-face communication, we try to monitor our isolation to make sure we don't go overboard with cyber communication. Unfortunately, some people find themselves drawn into a digital, virtual world that becomes more exciting than their real lives. They spend day after day socializing on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and online gaming sites. They lose contact with the people around them, and they become fully absorbed in their virtual selves. Consider the following ways in which many people choose to relate to others: Joining a World of Warcraft team rather than the soccer team Participating in live Webcasts rather than meeting up

Even after thimerosal was removed from vaccines, the antivaccine movement continued to gain momentum, fueled by the same skepticism of science that had propelled the electromagnetic-field scare, the cell-phone scare, the GM scare, and the poison-meme antiscience backlash as a whole.

I heard a great deal about freedom in the sense of freedom to—to talk on your cellphone as you drove a car, to pick up a drive-in daiquiri with a straw on the side, to walk about with a loaded gun. But there was almost no talk about freedom from such things as gun violence, car accidents, or toxic pollution. General Honoré was no nervous nelly, but he was mindful of the vulnerable communities around the "self-regulated" plants. "Part of the psychological program is that people think they're free when they're not," he said. "A company may be free to pollute, but that means the people aren't free to swim.

Look, cell phone geolocation data shows very few clustering anomalies for this hour and climate. And that’s holding up pretty much across all major metro areas. It’s gone down six percentage points since news of the Karachi workshop hit the Web, and it’s trending downward. If people are protesting, they aren’t doing it in the streets.” He circled his finger over a few clusters of dots. “Some potential protest knots in Portland and Austin, but defiance-related tag cloud groupings in social media put us within the three-sigma rule—meaning roughly sixty-eight percent of the values lie within one standard deviation of the mean.

Accordingly, the word “Facebook” appeared in a full one-third of divorce filings in 2011. All of this provides excellent fodder for the 81 percent of divorce attorneys who admit searching social media sites for evidence that can be used against their clients’ spouses. For instance, all the data shared on Facebook and Twitter and all the cell-phone call records and GPS locational data that neatly recorded whose cell phone was next to whose and when become fair game in the battle royal that can be divorce proceedings. The pictures innocently taken of you at all those parties over the years, blurry-eyed with drink in hand, now become evidence of unfit parenting, a nugget of gold for opposing counsel during cross-examination.

You tell me why the government needs this information on every Verizon customer but they don’t need to know who’s coming across our border? They don’t need to know where the 15,000 foreign nationals are that skipped out on their visa, just didn’t show up to school but they’re here in the United States. You tell me why they need my grandmother’s phone records but they don’t need to know where the Saudi nationals are. Why they don’t need — why they need to know who’s calling who inside the United States of America. They need to know who’s calling who, how long the phone conversations were lasting, the GPS locators for all of the cellphones, when those phones, when that phone call was made. Why do they need all of that for domestic terror but they can’t seem to get it right with the Boston bombers? They don’t know where that guy was. You tell me why they need all of this information. Why do you need to go for the AP? You don’t need to go for the AP and target the reporters.

To the wreck hunters," Orion said, raising his water bottle, "And to whale songs." "To truthing," said Liv. "To tea leaves," said Felix. We kept toasting: To Fidelia and Ransome. To the rest of the Lyric passengers whose bones has been picked clean by fish. To adventures. Our voices overlapped and were indistinguishable. To baseball caps, to Patsy Cline. To whiskey and blow jobs and cunnilingus, birth control, treasure, no treasure, sleeping bags, bug spray, headphones, and crosswords. "To family," I called. "Surviving," said Sam. "Please can you keep it down!" yelled a voice from inside the kayakers' tent. "To angry, reluctant chaperones," Mariah stage-whispered. We all collapsed into stifled giggles, then put out the fire and trekked down to the beach to stage an impromtu, perfectly imperfect reading of Cousteau! by cell-phone light. Same had brought the latest printout of the script with him. That night, it didn't matter what had come before and what was going to come after. In that moment, we were the last true poets of the sea, and what mattered more than anything else was our quest.

Stellar Plains, New Jersey, was a town that got mentioned whenever there was an article called “The Fifty Most Livable Suburbs in America.” Unlike most suburbs, this one was considered progressive. Though the turnpike that ran through it was punctuated by carpet-remnant outlets and tire wholesalers, and even an unsettling, windowless store no one had ever been to, advertising DVDS AND CHINESE SPECIALTY ITEMS, Main Street was quaint and New Englandy, with a cosmopolitan slant. There was an excellent bookstore, Chapter and Verse, at a moment when bookstores around the country were making way for cell-phone stores.

His cell-phone rang. Dominic fumbled for it on the nightstand next to the couch, the dim lights not helping his endeavour. He had piercing, generic, banal fluorescent lights on his face all the time at work and at University, it was so bad it made him loathe even natural sunlight. Lucky this apartment’s living room light had a dimmer. He flipped open his phone and said hello. ‘Hey Dom, how you doin’?’ a voice boomed. It was Ben. They proceeded to talk about the upcoming exams, which were deceptively close as it was week 10 at the moment. Yes, they would be alright. Yes, they would meet up afterwards. No, he hadn’t studied more than Ben had. As he clapped the phone closed after the genial conversation reached its natural nadir, he had forgotten most of what had been said

The stagnancy of energy, lack of interest in life and creativity, unproductiveness and mediocrity which beset so many people is not the consequence of their genetic and biological programming but of parental and social conditioning. The great Otto Rank acknowledged this and correctly rectified Freud's Thanatos concept. He, like several humanist and existential philosophers and psychologists who came later, realized that our Death Instinct or drive manifests itself in the very repression addressed throughout this book. Repression is a form of violence against the Self. Rank and his followers also realized that man's blind conformity to social norms and lack of differentiation from crowd-consciousness also serves to deaden creativity and productivity. They understood that the robotic organization man, behind his cubicle or on his cell-phone, slaving for some faceless corporation, fully embodies the Death Instinct.

Sam dragged her over to a small plot. Unlike the historic ones, this seemed like an ordinary grave. The headstone read Paul Danvers 1950-1997. “And this guy,” Sam said through clenched teeth. “Got so drunk one night, he accidentally set his house on fire, killing himself and his seventeen-year-old son.” Margot pulled back. This date had turned as sour as the feeling in her gut. “Murdered his own son.” Sam’s voice was tight and full of emotion. “He was going to college in the fall. Got a full ride and everything.” “That’s awful,” said Margot. “Where’s the son buried?” “So glad you asked.” Sam smiled so mournfully that Margot regretted asking at all. He pointed to the headstone next to Paul’s. In the darkness, it was nearly impossible to make out the young man’s name. Margot knelt on the soft grass and leaned forward, using the light from her cellphone to see the engraving. She gasped and nearly dropped the phone. “Sam Danvers,” she said, barely getting out the words. “That’s not funny.” Margot’s hands shook. “Is your name really Sam?” He no longer smiled, just nodded. “It is.” Sam came in close and said her name in such a soft whisper, Margot ached to touch him. He reached up to her face and tucked a strand of wavy hair behind her ear. “If things were different at all…” She put her hands on his. His skin felt dry and cold while hers felt clammy. “What does that mean? If what was different?” Sam leaned in, his face encased in shadows, and kissed Margot. She gasped before being taken in by the kiss. His breath tasted oddly of licorice and she was suddenly aware of the scent of fresh-cut grass. His lips were soft, but his kiss was urgent. He gripped the belt loops of Margot’s jean shorts and pulled her in tight against his chest. Her head swam and her heart pounded. She pulled away from him and attempted to catch her breath. She looked at him, her eyes bright with fury. “That wasn’t an answer.” He ran his hands through his hair. A typical guy stall tactic, thought Margot. But Sam wasn’t stalling. He was struggling. “Margot, I’m Sam Danvers,” he said. Margot shook her head — “No. No. No.” — and marched away from him.

On August 3, 2012, the fifteenth day of the government offensive, rebels in the city said they were desperately low on ammunition and expressed dismay that the international community had not reacted when a huge massacre could be coming. Again, Libya was the example. Gadhafi threatened to overrun Benghazi and when he tried to do it, NATO started bombing. Now in Syria, Assad was threatening to crush the opposition in Aleppo and had already started doing it, but Washington’s reaction was only hand-wringing. In my conversations with rebels it was clear they were becoming increasingly disheartened and desperate. (The rebels would usually communicate with each other on Skype, blending in with the billions of people using the Internet instead of going through cell-phone towers.) The United States was apparently still skittish about sending in arms because it feared they would end up in the hands of Islamic extremists, but that, like so many unintended consequences of US foreign policy in the Middle East, was a self-fulfilling prophecy. At this stage the rebels were numerous, strong, motivated, and moderate and I made that clear in my reports on the air.

A LITTLE BIT before Adeline made her unforgivable mistake, a billionaire named Sheryl Sandberg wrote a book called Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. Sheryl Sandberg didn’t have much eumelanin in the basale stratum of her epidermis. In her book, Sheryl Sandberg proposed that women who weren’t billionaires could stop being treated like crap by men in the workplace if only they smiled more and worked harder and acted more like the men who treated them like crap. Billionaires were always giving advice to people who weren’t billionaires about how to become billionaires. It was almost always intolerable bullshit. SANDBERG BECAME A BILLIONAIRE by working for a company named Facebook. Facebook made its money through an Internet web and mobile platform which advertised cellphones, feminine hygiene products and breakfast cereals. This web and mobile platform was also a place where hundreds of millions of people offered up too much information about their personal lives. Facebook was invented by Mark Zuckerberg, who didn’t have much eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis. What is your gender? asked Facebook. What is your relationship status? asked Facebook. What is your current city? asked Facebook. What is your name? asked Facebook. What are your favorite movies? asked Facebook. What is your favorite music? asked Facebook. What are your favorite books? asked Facebook. ADELINE’S FRIEND, the writer J. Karacehennem, whose last name was Turkish for Black Hell, had read an essay called “Generation Why?” by Zadie Smith, a British writer with a lot of eumelanin in the basale stratum of her epidermis. Zadie Smith’s essay pointed out that the questions Facebook asked of its users appeared to have been written by a 12-year-old. But these questions weren’t written by a 12-year-old. They were written by Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg was a billionaire. Mark Zuckerberg was such a billionaire that he was the boss of other billionaires. He was Sheryl Sandberg’s boss. J. Karacehennem thought that he knew something about Facebook that Zadie Smith, in her decency, hadn’t imagined. “The thing is,” said J. Karacehennem, whose last name was Turkish for Black Hell, “that we’ve spent like, what, two or three hundred years wrestling with existentialism, which really is just a way of asking, Why are we on this planet? Why are people here? Why do we lead our pointless lives? All the best philosophical and novelistic minds have tried to answer these questions and all the best philosophical and novelistic minds have failed to produce a working answer. Facebook is amazing because finally we understand why we have hometowns and why we get into relationships and why we eat our stupid dinners and why we have names and why we own idiotic cars and why we try to impress our friends. Why are we here, why do we do all of these things? At last we can offer a solution. We are on Earth to make Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg richer. There is an actual, measurable point to our striving. I guess what I’m saying, really, is that there’s always hope.