Cory Quotes

Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time-rich and cash-poor.

We lived in the attic, Christopher, Cory, Carrie, and me, Now there are only three.

When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.

You know what? Don’t even worry about it,” I said. “Cory Wheeler already asked me. I can tell him I changed my mind.” “Who the hell is Corky Wheeler?

Funny, for all surveillance, Osama bin Laden is still free—and we're not. Guess who's winning the "war on terror?

If you stare at someone long enough, they'll eventually look back at you.

All secrets become deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets.

We are the people of the book. We love our books. We fill our houses with books. We treasure books we inherit from our parents, and we cherish the idea of passing those books on to our children. Indeed, how many of us started reading with a beloved book that belonged to one of our parents? We force worthy books on our friends, and we insist that they read them. We even feel a weird kinship for the people we see on buses or airplanes reading our books, the books that we claim. If anyone tries to take away our books—some oppressive government, some censor gone off the rails—we would defend them with everything that we have. We know our tribespeople when we visit their homes because every wall is lined with books. There are teetering piles of books beside the bed and on the floor; there are masses of swollen paperbacks in the bathroom. Our books are us. They are our outboard memory banks and they contain the moral, intellectual, and imaginative influences that make us the people we are today.

I can't go underground for a year, ten years, my whole life, waiting for freedom to be handed to me. Freedom is something you have to take for yourself.

He hated it when adults told him he only felt the way he did because he was young. As if being young was like being insane or drunk, like the convictions he held were hallucinations caused by a mental illness that could only be cured by waiting five years.

It's the stupid questions that have some of the most surprising and interesting answers. Most people never think to ask the stupid questions.

Like most gunters, I voted to reelect Cory Doctorow and Wil Wheaton (again). There were no term limits, and those two geezers had been doing a kick-ass job of protecting user rights for over a decade.

Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.

Skipping school isn't a crime. It's an infraction. They're totally different.

Life is too short to try and glue together broken plates that were cheap in the first place.

Universal access to human knowledge is in our grasp, for the first time in the history of the world. This is not a bad thing.

If you want to double your success rate, triple your failure rate.

It's our goddamed city! It's our goddamed country. No terrorist can take it from us for so long as we're free. Once we're not free, the terrorists win! Take it back! You're young enough and stupid enough not to know that you can't possibly win, so you're the only ones who can lead us to victory! Take it back!

The future's a weirder place than we thought it would be when we were little kids.

He had them as spellbound as a room full of Ewoks listening to C-3PO.

For the love of God, unless you’re prepping for Rigoletto at the Met, go easy on the eyeliner.

Abnormal is so common, it's practically normal.

It takes a special kind of person to be a hater, but only a true loser will give the impression of being your friend while resenting every progress/success in your life.

Stories are propaganda, virii that slide past your critical immune system and insert themselves directly into your emotions.

The first casualty of any battle is the plan of attack.

James Lipton: If Heaven exists, what would you like God to say when you arrive at the pearly gates? Cory Monteith: Sorry I haven't been around. There's a good explanation.

Most of the people you see going to work today are LARPing (live-action role playing) an incredibly boring RPG (role-playing game) called "professionalism" that requires them to alter their vocabulary, posture, eating habits, facial expressions--every detail all the way down to what they allow themselves to find funny.

Take it from someone who's read the Wikipedia entry: this is how the Ottoman Empire was won: madden horsemen fueled by lethal jet-black coffee-mud.

Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do.

To feel that you aren’t important to your mother leaves a hole. Most often it is felt as a hole in the heart. It’s the hole where Mother was supposed to be.

Once you get to naming your laptop, you know that you're really having a deep relationship with it.

... the Kindle is a "roach motel" device: its license terms and DRM ensure that books can check in, but they can't check out.

Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, 'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich--yes, richer than a king-- And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Dionysus the god of drinking so hard you wake up with TWO hangovers and then they FIGHT.

The worst time to give someone your opinion, is when no one has asked for it.

The fact is, almost everything you do is collaborative. Somewhere out there, someone else had a hand it it.

Americans will smile at you and be extremely friendly but if your name is not Cory or Chad, they make no effort at saying it properly. The Brits will be surly and will be suspicious if you’re too friendly but they will treat foreign names as though they are actually valid names.” “That’s interesting,

Hope is the active conviction that despair will never have the last word.

Before you speak to me about your religion, first show it to me in how you treat other people; before you tell me how much you love your God, show me in how much you love all His children; before you preach to me of your passion for your faith, teach me about it through your compassion for your neighbors. In the end, I’m not as interested in what you have to tell or sell as I am in how you choose to live and give.

Sometimes the silence is the loudest thing in the room.

The difference between reading a story and studying a story is the difference between living the story and killing the story and looking at its guts.

The opposite of esprit d'escalier is the way that life's embarrassments come back to haunt us even after they're long past. I could remember every stupid thing I'd ever said or done, recall them with picture-perfect clarity. Any time I was feeling low, I'd naturally start to remember other times I felt that way, a hit parade of humiliations coming one after another to my mind.

This life is real too. We're communicating aren't we?

We don’t care about what you did yesterday—we care about what you’re going to do tomorrow.

The good news (for writers) is that this means that ebooks on computers are more likely to be an enticement to buy the printed book (which is, after all, cheap, easily had, and easy to use) than a substitute for it. You can probably read just enough of the book off the screen to realize you want to be reading it on paper.

He paused, gazing down at her in amusement, "Do you know when I first fell in love with you?" "No, when?" she asked, intrigued. "When you got out of your SUV looking hotter than a firecracker and madder than hell, and you said, 'Don't they stop at red lights where you're from, Forest Gump"'" --Zack to Cori after their first "I love you's

I don't know anything about press conferences." "Oh, just Google it. I'm sure someone's written an article on holding a successful one. I mean, if the President can manage it, I'm sure you can. He looks like he can barely tie his shoes without help.

Give a man a mask, and he'll tell you deeper and darker truths. But he'll also be more abusive, unaccountable, and demonic.

Your problem is, you're trying to understand it. You need to just do it.

I hate that," I said. "It's like there's no human beings in the chain of responsibility, just things-that-happen. It's the ultimate cop-out. The system did it. The company did it. The government did it. What about the person who pulls the trigger?

Boys want to hurry up and be men, and then comes a day they wish they could be boys again. But I’ll tell you a secret, Cory. Want to hear it?” I nodded. “No one,” Mrs. Neville whispered, “ever grows up.

The kid moved, and Judith dropped her lunch tray on the table and took her seat. "Would you like to swap lunches?" she asked me. "Yours looks so much better than mine." I was holding a mashed-up tunafish sand-wich. "This?" I asked, waving it. Half the tunafish fell out of the soggy bread. "Yum!" Judith exclaimed. "Want my pizza, Sam? Here. Take it." She slid her tray in front of me. "You bring great lunches. I wish my mum packed lunches like yours." I could see Cory staring at me , his eyes wide with disbelief. I really couldn't believe it, either. All Judith wanted from the world was to be exactly like me!

Tolerance is becoming accustomed to injustice; love is becoming disturbed and activated by another’s adverse condition. Tolerance crosses the street; love confronts. Tolerance builds fences; love opens doors. Tolerance breeds indifference; love demands engagement. Tolerance couldn’t care less; love always cares more. —

Hey, is there a female version of wingman? Wingwoman sounds awkward. I’m coining a new phrase: Titcaptain. Tell your friends.

For you the cup isn't half full or half empty, you're always topping it up.

We're going to fight this battle with everything we have, and we will probably lose. But then we will fight it again, and we will lose a little less, for this battle will win us many supporters. And then we'll lose *again*. And *again*. And we will fight on. Because as hard as it is to win by fighting, it's impossible to win by doing nothing.

You are not reading this book because a teacher assigned it to you, you are reading it because you have a desire to learn, and wanting to learn is the biggest advantage you can have.

Yes, you got enough mothering to survive, but not enough for the kind of foundation that supports healthy self-confidence, initiative, resilience, trust, healthy entitlement, self-esteem, and the many other qualities we need to thrive in this challenging world.

When you’re dying, even your unhappiest memories can induce a sort of fondness, as if delight is not confined to the good times, but is woven through your days like a skein of gold thread.

She knew what it was like to miss someone, for she missed Cory so continually and pressingly that the feeling was like its own shattering bass vibrating through her, and he was only 110 miles away at Princeton, not across the world.

I'm 17 years old. I'm not a straight-A student or anything. Even so, I figured out how to make an Internet that they can't wiretap. I figured out how to jam their person-tracking technology. I can turn innocent people into suspects and turn guilty people into innocents in their eyes. I could get metal onto an airplane or beat a no-fly list. I figured this stuff out by looking at the web and by thinking about it. If I can do it, terrorists can do it. They told us they took away our freedom to make us safe. Do you feel safe?

CORY: You ain't never gave me nothing! You ain't never done nothing but hold me back. Afraid I was gonna be better than you. All you ever did was try and make me scared of you. I used to tremble every time you called my name. Every time I heard your footsteps in the house. Wondering all the time...what's Papa gonna say if I do this?...What's he gonna say if I do that?...What's Papa gonna say if I turn on the radio? And Mama, too...she tries...but she's scared of you.

Whenever Richard Cory went down town, we people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, and he was always human when he talked; but still he fluttered pulses when he said, "Good morning," and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich - yes, richer than a king - And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything to make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light, and went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head.

You’re here!” She repeated, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips. He’d dropped his bags as she’d ran, and now he cupped her bottom in his large hands...His heart gave a giant thump, all the way down from his chest to his stomach, and as she smiled up at him he lowered his head and devoured her mouth, smile and all. Her lips were just as warm, and just as soft as he remembered, and her mouth tasted like peaches and cinnamon and Corinne Carol-Anne and without thought he pushed her back against the hallway wall and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her as though all their time apart would disappear in that frantic mating of tongue and lips and teeth. He wanted to take her into himself, all of her, and keep her warm and safe and happy, just like this moment when she burst with joy, just to see him. --Wounded (Green and Cory, after being apart)

A douchebag has an image to maintain. He is not real. He is the kind of guy who will change his last name into something cooler and more impressive.

For me -- for pretty much every writer -- the big problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity.

We roared. We were one big animal throat, roaring.

I'd never been a tall guy, and the girls I'd dated had all been my height--teenaged girls grow faster than guys, which is a cruel trick of nature.

The companies are multinational--why should labor still stick to borders?

Making other people feel like assholes was a terrible way to get them to stop acting like assholes.

Start at the beginning,” he said. “Move one step in the direction of your goal. Remember that you can change direction to maneuver around obstacles. You don’t need a plan, you need a vector.

Don’t worry, due’ane,” He murmured lowly....“Who’s Dewey Anne.” I asked him, voice gruff. He was so familiar, this Bracken, but so strange, naked next to me. I could touch him, I realized with wonder. I could run my hands from his flank to his shoulder, and he would welcome the touch because he was mine. You are.” He whispered, and I met his eyes. “It’s elfish, the feminine noun for ‘other equal half’. You are my other. My everything.” --Wounded (Bracken and Cory)

Go out there and swear to this world your oath, not with your words, but with what you do. Not with your hand over your heart, but with your hand outstretched to a world that desperately needs your hand, your help, your insights, your creativity, your honor, your courage. It needs you.

That's all any of these myths have been trying to do. To take a huge, terrifying phenomenon, something you can only stare at and go "whoa", and turn it into something more our size. Something we can fit inside our puny brains. Something really cool, even: a story.

Chris was in the rocker, fully clothed, and was strumming idly on Cory's guitar. "Dance, ballerina, dance," he softly chanted, and his singing voice wasn't bad at all. Maybe we could work as musicians---a trio -if Carrie ever recovered enough to want a voice again.

Narcissus is gorgeous. Like, imagine if someone could look exactly like bacon tastes and you have a pretty good picture of Narcissus (unless you're a vegetarian).

who you are is who you are when you are alone.

I want to just DO SOMETHING instead of ask someone else to start a process to investigate the possibility of someday possibly maybe doing something.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

my problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity

if it's not in my email archive, I don't know it

I mean, you can't be a revolutionary after the revolution, can you? Didn't we all struggle so that kids like Lil wouldn't have to?

Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s crashware turd that no one under the age of forty used voluntarily.

Sometimes life takes unexpected turns. Sometimes we hide the very core of our existence because we fear the judgment of others. Sometimes the universe shifts and we are provided with a brief moment to begin anew. These moments allow us to become fearless and let our perfectly created souls shine.

He leaned forward then and put his face in the crook of my neck, so he could smell the warmth rising from it. His nose touched my skin, just enough to make me shiver. When he spoke again, it was right next to my ear, and his voice was deep, and his breath moved the fine hairs on my ear, starting a vibration deep within my eardrum. “But that smell, right there,” He murmured, “That smell is all you. I love that smell too. I want to wear that smell on my skin and roll around in it. I want to live in that smell alone." --Wounded (Bracken to Cory)

– I understand the world can be cruel place and there are people out there counting on naive kids like you to take advantage of. Don't just think because it's video games people can't get hurt.

Do I have to ask what you're smiling about?" From the driver;s seat if the Mustang, Zack cut a glance at her, grinning like a fool. "Same thing you are, Mighty Phallus." --Zack to Cori after a morning of good lovin'.

CORY: The whole time I was growing up...living in his house...Papa was like a shadow that followed you everywhere. It weighed on you and sunk into your flesh. It would wrap around you and lay there until you couldn't tell which one was you anymore. That shadow digging in your flesh. Trying to crawl in. Trying to live through you. Everywhere I looked, Troy Maxson was staring back at me...hiding under the bed...in the closet. I'm just saying I've got to find a way to get rid of that shadow, Mama.

I’m suspicious of any plan to fix unfairness that starts with ‘step one, dismantle the entire system and replace it with a better one,’ especially if you can’t do anything else until step one is done.

Hiram Revels, Blanche K. Bruce, Edward Brooke, Carol Moseley Braun, Barack Obama, Roland W. Burris, Tim Scott, William “Mo” Cowan, Cory A. Booker, Kamala D. Harris, Raphael Warnock: that is the full and complete list of African Americans to serve in the United States Senate in the history of this country.

Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

sometimes a person who has survived losing everything builds the hardest shell over the tenderest soul.

Like, a flood seems like a great way to punish every living creature in the world except for fish. What the hell is a god supposed to do when all the FISH start being assholes?

Poetry doesn’t pay. But I need it. And so do you.

When in problem, or in doubt, run in cirles, scream and shout

This sounds like you’re saying that national security is more important than the Constitution.

The world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you.

Somewhere, in a distant land he barely knew the name of, people had stopped buying washing machines, and so his city had died.

Life's too short to be serious".

She was forty-five minutes late to work that day, but she had toast for breakfast. Goddamnit.

Complaining about the universe’s unfairness is never part of a successful strategy.

So close the book and go. The world is full of security systems. Hack one of them.

The important thing about security systems isn’t how they work, it’s how they fail.

Feeling valued and known are also part of this belonging. If a family claims you as their own but you don’t really feel that they know you or see you for who you are, you’ll feel like an outsider within your own family.

The best way to be superhuman is to do things that you love with other people who love them, too. The only way to do that is to admit you’re doing it because you love it and if you do more than everyone, you’re still only doing that because that’s what you choose.

So the moral of the story is that the primary ingredient for a successful nation is guns.

What if I got hit by lightning while walking with an umbrella? Ban umbrellas! Fight the menace of lightning!

She bared her teeth at me. “Screw you, shifter!” “Ah, is our honeymoon period over so quickly? You wanted to jump my bones just a second ago.

What's the point of a houseful of books you've already read?

A number is random if the simplest way to express it is by writing it down.

if you don’t love your work, neither will anyone else.

I am shocked both that I hurt him and that my shoe hit him, because I do throw like the proverbial girl. I hurl stuff around secure in the knowledge I’ll miss my target.

We were dancing, lost in the godbeat and the thrash and the screaming--TAKE IT BACK! TAKE IT BACK!

So Loki (the god of being a needless prick all the time)

The law didn’t care if you were actually doing anything bad; they were willing to put you under the microscope just for being statistically abnormal.

I had spoken to the universe, and the universe hadn’t given a damn.

They’re kids. If they understood risks, they wouldn’t join uprisings and march in the streets and the world would be a simpler place. Not a better one, of course. But simpler.

Everyone wants a definition of creativity that makes what they do into something special and what everyone else does into nothing special. But the fact is, we're all creative. We come up with weird and interesting ideas all the time. The biggest difference between 'creators' isn't their imagination - it's how hard they work. Ideas are easy. Doing stuff is hard.

[...]when everybody starts laughing at Ra's old hair and senility he gets real pissed and when you are a god and you are real pissed there is only one solution, my friends: GENOCIDE.

Hope confronts. It does not ignore pain, agony, or injustice. It is not a saccharine optimism that refuses to see, face, or grapple with the wretchedness of reality. You can't have hope without despair, because hope is a response. Hope is the active conviction that despair will never have the last word.

In the pairs of mothers and their adult children that I have seen, mothers who cared for their children out of obligation are then cared for in their elderly years by their adult children out of a similar obligation.

It was like finding Attila the Hun at a yoga class. Like finding Darth Vader playing ultimate Frisbee in the park. Like finding Megatron volunteering at a children's hospital. Like finding Nightmare Moon having a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese.

So basically be careful never to be too awesome or you will be mysteriously executed just like Martin Luther King and Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln and JFK and Malcolm X and Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and... wow why are we so mean to our best people?

First, platforms are good to their users. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Next, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Finally, they have become a giant pile of shit.

...just like that wild-growin’ ivy you always see climbin’ up old broken-down fences, Cory’d gone and wound himself in and around my lonely life. And I liked that there ivy, ’cause it held me together, made me feel so much stronger, all wrapped around me like that. But somehow I was just as scared of the ivy bein’ there as I was at the thought of it fallin’ loose and goin’ away.

Remember everything and anything. Don't you go through a day without remembering something of it, and tucking that memory away like a treasure. Because it is. and memories are sweet doors, Cory. They're teachers and friends and disciplinarians. When you look at something don't just look. See it. Really, really see it. See it so when you write it down, somebody else can see it too.

If you've never programmed a computer, you should. There's nothing like it in the whole world. When you program a computer, it does exactly what you tell it to do. It's like designing a machine — any machine, like a car, like a faucet, like a gas-hinge for a door — using math and instructions. It's awesome in the truest sense: it can fill you with awe.

You know, there comes a point where you're not giving advice anymore. There comes a point where you're just moralizing, demonstrating your hypothetical superiority when it comes to doing the right thing. That's not very fucking helpful, you know. I'm holding my shit together right now, and rather than telling me that it's not enough, you could try to help me with the stuff I'm capable of.

People try to create order. Discipline. Rules. It gives them peace. A sense of regulation. Of strength. It makes them feel in control. But life is chaos, reader. The sooner you learn this, the better.

I fireballed him as he was seeking out treasure after we wiped out a band of orcs, playing rock-paper-scissors with each orc to determine who would prevail in combat. This is a lot more exciting than it sounds. It's quite civilized, and a little weird. You go running after someone through the woods, catch up with him, bare your teeth, and sit down to play a little roshambo.

As we are enabled to live longer, we are also condemned to die longer.

What people instinctively regard as cool is real power - consistency. Pathetic is not cool. Being locked in a tragedy, but not knowing it. That's lameness.

s security expert Bruce Schneier has said, "Making bits harder to copy is like making water that's less wet.

As the leaf takes its time finding the ground so must I.

What you’ve got to understand, son,” says the doctor, “is it’s all the fault of the alien space bats.

Where there's life, there's hope. Living people can change things, dead people cannot.

No matter how difficult life gets, the important thing is to live it with hope.

Everything good in the world comes from the efforts of people who came before us.

We all try and live our lives in a way that resonates most with what our purpose is. --from an interview in The Globe & Mail, June 4, 2011

Together they sat in silence until Taylor said, 'Please stay with me.' The rabbit listened

How did you ever train in this thing at knight camp without peripheral vision?" "Knights don't need peripheral vision. They need chivalry.

People actually like supporting the artists whose work they like. It makes them feel happy. You don’t have to force them. And if you force them, they don’t feel as good.

I’ve always loved just learning stuff for its own sake. Just to be smarter about the world around me.

These days, tales of what Facebook did with its users during the singularity are commonly used to scare naughty children in Wales.

Otto von Bismarck quipped, "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.

ROSE: You can't be nobody but who you are, Cory. That shadow wasn't nothing but you growing into yourself. You either got to grow into it or cut it down to fit you. But that's all you got to make life with. That's all you got to measure yourself against that world out there. Your daddy wanted you to everything he wasn't...and at the same time he tried to make you into everything he was. I don't know if he was right or wrong...but I do know he meant to do more good than he meant to do harm. He wasn't always right. Sometimes when he touched he bruised. And sometimes when he took me in his arms he cut.

There's something really liberating about having some corner of your life that's yours, that no one gets to see except you. It's a little like nudity or taking a dump. Everyone gets naked every once in a while. Everyone has to squat on the toilet. There's nothing shameful, deviant or weird about either of them.

So, basically, what it all comes down to is that we are made of tears from the disembodied eyeball of a guy who fucks his own shadow and surrounds himself with spit and puke. I'm gonna go cry now. I hope it doesn't turn it into babies.

For hundreds of years, the human race has dreamt of a world where knowledge could be shared universally, where every human being on the planet could have access to our storehouse of knowledge. Because knowledge is power, and shared knowledge is a superpower. Now, after centuries, we have it within our grasp to realize one of our most beautiful dreams.

His name is Julian Janus Marquet, but I’m going to call him Jory.” Both Chris and Paul heard my thin whisper. I was so tired, so sleepy. “Why would you call him Jory?” asked Paul, but it wasn’t me who had the strength to answer. It was Chris who understood my reasoning. “If he had been blond, she would have named him Cory—but the J will stand for Julian, and the rest for Cory.” Our eyes met and I smiled. How wonderful to be understood, and never have to explain.

Right, and you point out something important which is that people who don’t want to pay, people who are pirates, don’t get bothered by the DRM, they go out and buy the cracked books or download the cracked books for free. It’s only people who are foolish enough to pay for them that get locked into these platforms.

The United States of America was a pirate nation for the first one hundred years of its existence, ripping off the patents and trademarks of the imperial European powers it had liberated itself from by blood. By keeping their GDP at home, the U.S. revolutionaries were able to bootstrap their nation into an industrial powerhouse. Now, it seems, their descendants are bent on ensuring that no other country can pull the same trick off.

Businesses are great structures for managing big projects. It’s like trying to develop the ability to walk without developing a skeleton. Once in a blue moon, you get an octopus, but for the most part, you get skeletons. Skeletons are good shit.

The Bill of Rights was written before data-mining," he said. He was awesomely serene, convinced of his rightness. "The right to freedom of association is fine, but why shouldn't the cops be allowed to mine your social network to figure out if you're hanging out with gangbangers and terrorists?

and Thor really likes hair, I guess so he gets SUPER ANGRY and he chases down Loki and is like "Hey how about I cut of all of your FACE?!" and Loki is like "But I need my face for making infuriating smirks with!

Anything invented before you were eighteen was there all along. Anything invented before you’re thirty is exciting and will change the world forever. Anything invented after that is an abomination and should be banned.

Green smiled at me, all that compassion in his eyes, and he cupped my face in his hands, as though it were delicate, and precious. "You must never leave me,” he said solemnly. "You may take as many lovers as you want, but you must promise to always be here to make me feel like I can do all that needs to be done.

Don’t worry. All of this happened a long time ago. Sometimes, none of it has happened yet.

THIS IS WHAT TOM CRUISE BELIEVES IN

Utopia is impossible; everyone who isn’t a utopian is a shmuck.

I have given this offer more consideration than it is due already. Now, fuck off. Then keep fucking off. Fuck off until you come up to a gate with a sign saying ‘You Can’t Fuck Off Past Here.’ Climb over the gate, dream the impossible dream, and keep fucking off forever.

In a happy home, there aren’t continuing crises you need to solve (or wonder how to endure when you’re too young to solve anything). People aren’t stuck in power struggles. There aren’t silent or not-so-silent wars between family members. In a happy home you’re not all holding your breath. You can relax and be yourself.

Cory wondered if maybe some people were better off dead. When you’re dead you don’t have to face the horrors of life, whether it’s striving to be the best, dealing with something bad you or somebody else did, dealing with someone’s death or anything. Most people, if not everyone, had a reason to die. Dead people can’t even be upset about dying because they’re dead.

Making stuff: The folks at Instructables have put up some killer HOWTOs for building the technology in this book. It's easy and incredibly fun. There's nothing so rewarding in this world as making stuff, especially stuff that makes you more free.

The number of games went up or down according to the brutal, elegant logic of the economics of fun: a certain amount of difficulty plus a certain amount of your friends plus a certain amount of interesting strangers plus a certain amount of reward plus a certain amount of opportunity equaled fun

Of women who choose not to have children, most are undermothered and fear they won’t know how. Sometimes they fear they will “mess up” their kids like they feel they have been messed up. (Although let’s not forget that there are other important reasons someone may choose not to become a parent.)

So he calls up Loki like “LOKI SOLVE MY PROBLEMS WITH GIANTS.” And Loki is like “What? Why?” And Odin is like “REMEMBER HOW WE HAVE AN OATH OF KINSHIP THAT MEANS YOU HAVE TO DO WHAT I SAY?” And Loki is like “Oh yeah. Why did we do that again?” And Odin is like “NO TIME FOR QUESTIONS. STALL THAT GIANT.

No, see what I’m trying to say is that I watch people organizing themselves into these neat little conflicts: Atheists versus Christians Jews versus Muslims Fundamentalists versus basically everybody and I feel like a kid in a broken home who can’t get Mom and Dad to stop fighting. The assumption that every one of these groups is making— and I think it’s important to acknowledge that every group, from scientist to Sikh, assumes this—is that they are right. That they are somehow behaving rationally. But the fact that we can get so angry about this stuff means that it’s not rational and I think we could get a hell of a lot further by synthesizing these beliefs than by finding more and more nuanced ways to call each other dicks.

It's good versus evil, Dan. You don't want to be a post-person. You want to stay human. The rides are human. We each mediate them through our own experience. We're physically inside of them, and they talk to us through our senses. What Debra's people are building--it's hive-mind [stuff:]. Directly implanting thoughts! Jesus! It's not an experience, it's brainwashing!

Profound connections exist between all; interdependency so manifest that perceived separation is a delusion. Like a great pool containing millions of drops of water, introduce a stone and all are elevated, poison a part and all are ill affected. You can't connect more or less; the connection exists no matter what our perception. But ignore the connection, deny it, and consequences come.

Hopefully not another employee stealing credit cards, Brooke mused. Or any sort of headache-inducing “oops moment,” like the time one of the restaurant managers called to ask if he could fire a line cook after discovering that the man was a convicted murderer. “Jeez. How’d you learn that?” Brooke had asked. “He made a joke to one of the waiters about honing his cooking skills in prison. The waiter asked what he’d been serving time for, and he said, ‘Murder.’” “I bet that put an end to the conversation real fast. And yes, you can fire him,” Brooke had said. “Obviously, he lied on his employment application.” All of Sterling’s employees, regardless of job position, were required to answer whether they’d ever been convicted of a crime involving “violence, deceit, or theft.” Pretty safe to say that murder qualified. Ten minutes later, the manager had called her back. “Um . . . what if he didn’t exactly lie? I just double-checked his application, and as it turns out, he did check the box for having been convicted of a crime.” Brooke had paused at that. “And then the next question, where we ask what crime he’d been convicted for, what did he write?” “Uh . . . ‘second-degree murder.’” “I see. Just a crazy suggestion here, Cory, but you might want to start reading these applications a little more closely before making employment offers.” “Please don’t fire me.

I believe that we are not a nation of fear, but a nation of love--a love that heals, not hurts, a love that affirms the dignity and humanity of all, not diminishes the poor and the marginalized. I believe that this broken system, which afflicts us all, will be repaired. It must be if we are to hold true to our most precious ideals of liberty and justice for all.

Before you speak to me about your religion, first show it to me in how you treat other people; before you tell me how much you love your God, show me in how much you love all His children; before you preach to me of your passion for your faith, teach me about it through your compassion for your neighbors.

I thought your boyfriend died?" Nicky asked, and it was actually a good question, and I was so mad that I wasn't even embarrassed to answer him. "We were three," I choked out. "I had a night lover and a day lover,” I said, and it felt like poetry, just to say it there in public in the middle of the quad, under the foggy sun. "And they loved each other like night loves the day. And then the night lover died, and the day lover and I were naked in the sunshine, with only ourselves for cover.

Che pensieri soavi, che speranze, che cori, o Silvia mia! Quale allor ci apparia la vita umana e il fato! Quando sovviemmi di cotanta speme, un affetto mi preme acerbo e sconsolato, e tornami a doler di mia sventura. O natura, o natura, perché non rendi poi quel che prometti allor? perché di tanto inganni i figli tuoi?

From the outside, Cory’s life looked perfect—money, fame, beautiful girlfriend, millions of adoring fans—but I guess his same old demons were still there, raising as much mental and emotional hell as they always had. Maybe even more, now that everything was supposed to be okay. I think this is a common misconception about fame, or any kind of marker of “success” in life, be it landing your dream job, getting married, or having a kid: people think that you achieve these goals, you check off certain boxes, and all of a sudden life’s perfect and you don’t have any problems. That’s not true. You’re still going to wake up every morning, and your problems will still be there unless you figure out a way to make them go away. And more often than not, new ones will show up in their place. I

I used to want to understand how the world worked. Little things, like heavy stuff goes at the bottom of the laundry bag, or big things, like the best way to get a boy to chase you is to ignore him, or medium things, like if you cut an onion under running water your eyes won't sting, and if you wash your fingers afterwards with lemon-juice they won't stink. I used to want to know all the secrets, and every time I learned one, I felt like I'd taken--a step. On a journey. To a place. A destination: to be the kind of person who knew all this stuff, the way everyone around me seemed to know all this stuff. I thought that once I knew enough secrets, I'd be like them.

Amazon makes 38 billion every year charging merchants for search placement. On average, the first result in an Amazon search is 29 percent more expensive than the best result for your search. Click any of the top four links on the top of your screen, and you'll pay an average of 25 percent more than you would for your best match. On average, that best match is located seventeen places down in an Amazon search result.

You go to a great school not so much for knowledge as for arts and habits; for the habit of attention, for the art of expression, for the art of assuming, at a moment’s notice, a new intellectual position, for the art of entering quickly into another person’s thoughts, for the habit of submitting to censure and refutation, for the art of indicating assent or dissent in graduated terms… And above all, you go to a great school for self-knowledge.

Helpfiles are traditionally outnumbered by no-help files, which superficially resemble a helpfile in form but not in content because they don't actually tell you anything you don't already know, or they answer every question except the one you're asking, or you open them and a giant animated paper clip leaps out and cheerfully asks where you want to go today. And wikis are worse.

Scott goes to the computer and loads a chart that says something about global warming. Scott says, "See?" Judy says, "I don't think global warming is important, people shouldn't need to use global warming as an excuse to stop being wasteful." Scott says, "How can you not believe this?" Judy says, "There has been golf ball-sized hail storms and hurricanes for a long time, it didn't just start all of the sudden. In the movie Al Gore drives in an SUV." Scott leaves to have a cigarette. Cory says, "Al Gore owns his own farm." Judy stares at the TV. Judy thinks, "No one in this room cares about global warming, this is ridiculous, we are all smoking cigarettes and eating cheese, how can any one of us care about voting? No one in this room cares about anything.

the first thing that’s gonna tip everyone off that the world is ending is this thing called Fimbulvetr which just means THE WINTER OF WINTERS and that is exactly what it is. It is a winter MADE OF MULTIPLE WINTERS like, there is going to be a winter and then once that winter is finished there will be ANOTHER WINTER. And then after that maybe it will be spring? Think again, son. MORE WINTER.

That’s why you never hear politicians talking about ‘citizens,’ it’s all ‘taxpayers,’ as though the salient fact of your relationship to the state is how much you pay. Like the state was a business and citizenship was a loyalty program that rewarded you for your custom with roads and health care. Zottas cooked the process so they get all the money and own the political process, pay as much or as little tax as they want. Sure, they pay most of the tax, because they’ve built a set of rules that gives them most of the money. Talking about ‘taxpayers’ means that the state’s debt is to rich dudes, and anything it gives to kids or old people or sick people or disabled people is charity we should be grateful for, since none of those people are paying tax that justifies their rewards from Government Inc.

Words are important. Like all words, the words we use to describe ourselves and our relationships can be used by others in ways that help us and in ways that hurt us. It helps when we get to choose what we call ourselves and our relationships. It helps when we get to choose who we want to have relationships with. And it helps when every relationship we have includes trust, respect, joy and justice.

If there’s a disaster, do you go over to your neighbor’s house with: a) a covered dish or b) a shotgun? It’s game theory. If you believe your neighbor is coming over with a shotgun, you’d be an idiot to pick a); if she believes the same thing about you, you can bet she’s not going to choose a) either. The way to get to a) is to do a) even if you think your neighbor will pick b). Sometimes she’ll point her gun at you and tell you to get off her land, but if she was only holding the gun because she thought you’d have one, then she’ll put on the safety and you can have a potluck.

You need to understand something.' she said. 'The world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you. If all you see are problems, darkness, and despair, then that is all there is ever going to be. But if you are one of those stubborn people who every time you open your eyes you see hope, you see opportunity, possibility, you see love or the face of God, then you can be someone who helps me.

We’re not making a world without greed, Jacob. We’re making a world where greed is a perversion. Where grabbing everything for yourself instead of sharing is like smearing yourself with shit: gross. Wrong. Our winning doesn’t mean you don’t get to be greedy. It means people will be ashamed for you, will pity you and want to distance themselves from you. You can be as greedy as you want, but no one will admire you for it.

If you love freedom, if you think the human condition is dignified by privacy, by the right to be left alone, by the right to explore your weird ideas provided you don’t hurt others, then you have common cause with the kids whose web-browsers and cell phones are being used to lock them up and follow them around. If you believe that the answer to bad speech is more speech - not censorship - then you have a dog in the fight. If you believe in a society of laws, a land where our rulers have to tell us the rules, and have to follow them too, then you’re part of the same struggle that kids fight when they argue for the right to live under the same Bill of Rights that adults have.

...Love recognizes that every person has value, that we need each other, that we are interdependent – that what happens to you matters to me. Love necessitates extending yourself, often out of your comfort zone, making the conscious choice to SEE that person, despite his or her circumstances, as worthy and as vital to you. Love recognizes that if another falls, fails, or succumbs, then we are all worse off and our lives are diminished.

The fact was, there wasn't room on earth for a couple million gold-farmers to turn into high-paid video-game executives. The fact was, if you had to slice the pie into enough pieces to give one to everyone, you'd end up slicing them so thin you could see through them. "When 30,000 people share an apple, no one benefits -- especially not the apple." It was a quote one of his economics profs had kept written in the corner of his white-board, and any time a student started droning on about compassion for the poor, the old prof would just tap the board and say, "Are you willing to share your lunch with 30,000 people?

[T]hat little voice shut up the instant I did something. And not just something: the exact thing I knew to be right. Because if the system was broken, if Carrie Johnstone wasn’t going to ever pay consequences for her action, it wasn’t because “the system” failed to get her. It was because people like me chose not to act when we could. The system was people, and I was part of it, part of its problems, and I was going to be part of the solution from now on.

There’s something else,” he said. “What?” “I wasn’t going to mention it, but I want you to understand why I have to do this.” “Jesus, Jolu, what?” “I hate to say it, but you’re white. I’m not. White people get caught with cocaine and do a little rehab time. Brown people get caught with crack and go to prison for twenty years. White people see cops on the street and feel safer. Brown people see cops on the street and wonder if they’re about to get searched. The way the DHS is treating you? The law in this country has always been like that for us.

Once upon a time, my government turned my city into a police state, kidnapped me, and tortured me. When I got free, I decided that the problem wasn’t the system, but who was running it. Bad guys had gotten into places of high office. We needed good apples. I worked my butt off to get people to vote for good apples. We had elections. We installed the kind of apples everyone agreed would be the kind of apples we could be proud of. They said good things. A few real dirtbags like Carrie Johnstone lost their jobs. And then, well, the good apples turned out to act pretty much exactly like the bad apples. Oh, they had reasons. There were emergencies. Circumstances. It was all really regrettable. But there were always emergencies, weren’t there?

There were dumplings on the train, sold by grim men and women with deep lines cut into their faces by years and worry and hunger and misery. This was the provinces, the outer territories, the mysterious China that had sent millions of girls and boys to Canton to earn their fortunes in the Pearl River Delta. Matthew knew all their strange accents, he spoke their strange Mandarin language, but he was Cantonese, and these were not his people. Those were not his dumplings.

She was cuckoo about dime stores, where she bought cosmetics and pins and combs. After we locked the expensive purchases in the station wagon we went into McCory's or Kresge's and were there by the hour, up and down the aisles with the multitude, mostly of women, and in the loud-played love music. Some things Thea liked to buy cheaply, they maybe gave her the best sense of the innermost relations of pennies and nickels and explained the real depth of money. I don't know. But I didn't think myself too good to be wandering in the dime store with her. I went where and as she said and did whatever she wanted because I was threaded to her as if through the skin. So that any trifling object she took pleasure in could become important to me at once; anything at all, a comb or hairpin or piece of line, a compass inside a tin ring that she bought with great satisfaction, or a green billed baseball cap for the road, or the kitten she kept in the apartment - she would never be anywhere without an animal.

And that's the real reason the powerful fear open systems and networks. If anyone can set up a free voicecall to anyone else in the world, using the net, then we can all communicate with the same ease that's standard for the high and mighty. [...] And if any worker, anywhere, can communicate with any other worker, anywhere, for free, instantaneously, without the boss's permission, then, brother, look out, because the Coase cost of demanding better pay, better working conditions and a slice of the pie just got a *lot* cheaper. And the people who have the power aren't going to sit still and let a bunch of grunts take it away from them.

Feeling that Mommy is happy is a great boon to a child. Imagine for a moment a snapshot of Mother smiling and laughing. She’s happy to be here. She’s happy with you and anyone else in the picture, and she doesn’t need things to be any different than they are in that moment. She is relaxed! When Mommy is relaxed and smiling, we sense that her world is right. And when her world is right, then our world is right. But when Mommy is distracted or worried or depressed, we don’t have the same kind of support, and it’s harder for us to relax and be fully present. It doesn’t feel quite right to be expansive and expressive when Mommy is withdrawn or frazzled. There isn’t really a place to be happy, unless we’re putting on a happy face trying to cheer Mother up. Mother’s happiness relieves us of these burdens, and we can simply express ourselves as we are.

I read my copy of On the Road and dug the scenery whizzing past. On the Road is a semi-autobiographical novel about Jack Kerouac, a druggy, hard-drinking writer who goes hitchhiking around America, working crummy jobs, howling through the streets at night, meeting people and parting ways. Hipsters, sad-faced hobos, con-men, muggers, scumbags and angels. There's not really a plot -- Kerouac supposedly wrote it in three weeks on a long roll of paper, stoned out of his mind -- only a bunch of amazing things, one thing happening after another. He makes friends with self-destructing people like Dean Moriarty, who get him involved in weird schemes that never really work out, but still it works out, if you know what I mean. There was a rhythm to the words, it was luscious, I could hear it being read aloud in my head. It made me want to lie down in the bed of a pickup truck and wake up in a dusty little town somewhere in the central valley on the way to LA, one of those places with a gas station and a diner, and just walk out into the fields and meet people and see stuff and do stuff.

Every telecomm company is as big a corporate welfare bum as you could ask for. Try to imagine what it would cost at market rates to go around to every house in every town in every country and pay for the right to block traffic and dig up roads and erect poles and string wires and pierce every home with cabling. The regulatory fiat that allows these companies to get their networks up and running is worth hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars. If phone companies want to operate in the “free market,” then let them: the FCC could give them 60 days to get all their rotten copper out of our dirt, or we’ll buy it from them at the going scrappage rates. Then, let’s hold an auction for the right to be the next big telecomm company, on one condition: in exchange for using the public’s rights-of-way, you have to agree to connect us to the people we want to talk to, and vice-versa, as quickly and efficiently as you can.

I miss talking to you, Fallen.” “That’s too bad. I don’t ever miss anything about you.” “You’re fun.” His eyes sparkled like sunlit gems. “You’re never afraid to go tit for tat with me.” “I don’t want anything to do with your tits or tats.” He laughed again, his eyes darkening back to brown. “Did we really just get beat up by that little Junior Guardian?” “If anyone asks we’ll say that there were fifty of them.” I touched my cheek and hissed. “Goddamn ninja punk.” “I feel terrible and I don’t mean my wounded ego. I feel really bad.” He groaned and rolled to his side, not moving from the floor. “I can’t believe we just got our asses handed to us by a goddamn Jonas-brother wannabe.” “He had the hilt piece. Did you see it?” “No, I was too busy crying like a girl.