“Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?”
― Connie Willis, quote from Bellwether
“Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else - cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments - as long as the paperwork's filled out properly. And in on time.”
― Connie Willis, quote from Bellwether
“The amazing thing is that chaotic systems don't always stay chaotic," Ben said, leaning on the gate. "Sometimes they spontaneously reorganize themselves into an orderly structure."
"They suddenly become less chaotic?" I said, wishing that would happen at HiTek.
"No, that's the thing. They become more and more chaotic until they reach some sort of chaotic critical mass. When that happens, they spontaneously reorganize themselves at a higher equilibrium level. It's called self-organized criticality.”
― Connie Willis, quote from Bellwether
“It was about a girl who helps an ugly old woman who turns out to be a good fairy in disguise. Inner values versus shallow appearances.”
― Connie Willis, quote from Bellwether
“Don't they know science doesn't work like that? You can't just order scientific breakthroughs. They happen when you are looking at something you've been working on for years and suddenly see a connection you never noticed before, or when you're looking for something else altogether. Sometimes they even happen by accident. Don't they know you can't get a scientific breakthrough just because you want one?”
― Connie Willis, quote from Bellwether
“One of the nastier trends in library management in recent years is the notion that libraries should be "responsive to their patrons." This means having dozens of copies of The Bridges of Madison County and Danielle Steele, and a consequent shortage of shelf space, to cope with which librarians have taken to purging books that haven't been checked out lately.”
― Connie Willis, quote from Bellwether
“I picked out F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" and a couple of mysteries, which always have simple, solvable problems like "How did the murderer get into the locked room?" instead of hard ones like "What causes trends?" and "What did I do to deserve Flip?" and then went over to the eight hundreds.”
― Connie Willis, quote from Bellwether
“I don't know who started the myth that sheep are fluffy and white. They were more the color of an old mop and just as matted with dirt.”
― Connie Willis, quote from Bellwether
“Insecure, ill-dressed chaos theorist desires intelligent, insightful, incandescent trends researcher. Must be SC.”
― Connie Willis, quote from Bellwether
“Management is proving beyond a shadow of a doubt they don't have enough to do," she murmured back. "So they've invented a new acronym.”
― Connie Willis, quote from Bellwether
“What's Management up to?" I whispered to Bennett.
"My guess is a new acronym," he whispered. "Departmental Unification Management Business." He wrote down the ltters on his legal pad. "D.U.M.B.”
― Connie Willis, quote from Bellwether
“1. Optimize potential.
2. Facilitate empowerment.
3. Implement visioning.
4. Strategize priorities.
5. Augment core structures.”
― Connie Willis, quote from Bellwether
“Since I spend my working days studying trends, many of which are downright disgusting, I feel it’s my duty after work to encourage the trends I’d like to see catch on, like signaling before you change lanes, and chocolate cheesecake. And reading. Also,”
― Connie Willis, quote from Bellwether
“Bigotry is one of the oldest and ugliest of trends, so persistent it only counts as a fad because the target keeps changing: Huguenots, Koreans, homosexuals, Muslims, Tutsis, Jews, Quakers, wolves, Serbs, Salem housewives. Nearly every group, so long as it’s small and different, has had a turn, and the pattern never changes—disapproval, isolation, demonization, persecution. Which was one of the reasons it’d be nice to find the switch that turned fads on. I’d like to turn that one off for good.”
― Connie Willis, quote from Bellwether
“Eureka!"s like the one Archimedes had when he stepped in a bathtub and suddenly realized the answer to the problem of testing metals' density are few and far between, and mostly it's just trying and failing and trying something else, feeding in data and eliminating variables and staring at the results, trying to figure out where you went wrong.”
― Connie Willis, quote from Bellwether
Connie Willis
Born place: in The United States
Born date December 31, 1945
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“Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put it's trust in life!”
― Joseph Conrad, quote from Victory
“Men tire quickly when they are scared. A patrol in hostile terrain is the most tiring thing a soldier can do short of violence.”
― Miles Cameron, quote from The Red Knight
“ عندما تتضارب رغباتك مع خيالك , فان خيالك يكسب دون خلاف ”
― Joseph Murphy, quote from The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
“In space flight, “attitude” refers to orientation: which direction your vehicle is pointing relative to the Sun, Earth and other spacecraft. If you lose control of your attitude, two things happen: the vehicle starts to tumble and spin, disorienting everyone on board, and it also strays from its course, which, if you’re short on time or fuel, could mean the difference between life and death. In the Soyuz, for example, we use every cue from every available source—periscope, multiple sensors, the horizon—to monitor our attitude constantly and adjust if necessary. We never want to lose attitude, since maintaining attitude is fundamental to success.
In my experience, something similar is true on Earth. Ultimately, I don’t determine whether I arrive at the desired professional destination. Too many variables are out of my control. There’s really just one thing I can control: my attitude during the journey, which is what keeps me feeling steady and stable, and what keeps me headed in the right direction. So I consciously monitor and correct, if necessary, because losing attitude would be far worse than not achieving my goal.”
― Chris Hadfield, quote from An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth
“In the expression of grief lies recovery from grief itself. Nor”
― Christopher Priest, quote from The Prestige
Here, Home, Hope
A Murder of Quality
InterWorld
Law of Success
If It's Not Forever....
Home of the BraveBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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