All the Birds in the Sky

You know... no matter what you do, people are going to expect you to be someone you're not. But if you're clever and lucky and work your butt off, then you get to be surrounded by people who expect you to be the person you wish you were.

A society that has to burn witches to hold itself together is a society that has already failed, and just doesn't know it yet.

Society is the choice between freedom on someone else’s terms and slavery on yours.

Boredom is the mind’s scar tissue.

Self-awareness paradoxically requires an awareness of the other.

I am unflappable,” Laurence told the bus driver. Who shrugged, as if he’d thought so too, once upon a time, until someone had flapped him.

When the world turns chaotic, we must be the better part of chaos.

Loose ends are cool... Loose ends mean that you are still living your life. The person who dies with the most loose ends wins.

We don’t need better emotional communication from machines. We need people to have more empathy. The reason the Uncanny Valley exists is because humans created it to put other people into. It’s how we justify killing each other.

You never learned the secret,” said Roberta. “How to be a crazy motherfucker and get away with it. Everybody else does it. What, you didn’t think they were all sane, did you? Not a one of them. They’re all crazier than you and me put together. They just know how to fake it. You could too, but you’ve chosen to torture all of us instead. That’s the definition of evil right there: not faking it like everybody else. Because all of us crazy fuckers can’t stand it when someone else lets their crazy show. It’s like bugs under the skin. We have to destroy you. It’s nothing personal.

On the long drive home, Laurence tuned out his parents explaining to him that life isn’t an adventure, for chrissake, life is a long slog and a series of responsibilities and demands. When Laurence was old enough to do what he liked, he would be old enough to understand he couldn’t do what he liked.

That’s the definition of evil right there: not faking it like everybody else. Because all of us crazy fuckers can’t stand it when someone else lets their crazy show.

One day the Singularity would elevate humans to cybernetic superbeings, and maybe then people would say what they meant. Probably not, though.

I don't actually think that ethics are derived from principles. At all." Patricia scooted a little closer again and touched his arm with a few cool fingertips. "I think that the most basic thing of ethics is being aware of how your actions affect others, and having an awareness of what they want and how they feel. And that's always going to depend on who you're dealing with.

Love was the most susceptible to random failure of all human enterprises.

You celebrated the small victories, and you dreamed of the big ones to come.

People who told you to "think fast" were always those who thought much more slowly than you did.

(He had already figured out a great universal truth, that people never asked for documentation of anything, as long as you asked them for documentation first.)

But the real point is, how do you ever know your own emotions are spontaneous and genuine, and not just a programmed set of responses?

Sometimes I wish I was crazy, it would make everything easier.

every time you solve a problem you’d cause another problem. And maybe all these plagues and droughts are nature’s way of striking a balance? We humans don’t have any natural predators left, so nature has to find other ways to handle us.

If they had given standardized tests in assassin school, he would not have lasted a day.

Someone who doesn’t care if they get Tater Tots or turnip slurry is a person who has given up on life.

He went to make coffee. Because when you have just heard about the possible transformation of the human race into feral monsters you need to be doing something with your hands and creating something hot and comforting for another person.

The bookstore had no musty “old books” smell, and instead it had a nice oaky aroma, similar to the way Laurence imagined the whiskey casks would be before you put Scotch into them for aging. This was a place where you would age well.

Nature has no opinion, no agenda. Nature provides a playing field, a not particularly level one, on which we compete with all creatures great and small. It’s more that nature’s playing field is full of traps.

What was worse, being crazy or being evil?

no matter what you do, people are going to expect you to be someone you’re not. But if you’re clever and lucky and work your butt off, then you get to be surrounded by people who expect you to be the person you wish you were.

It’s his life. One tends to privilege personal insights in such matters.