“If the modern world were a patient in my care... I would diagnose it suicidal." - Dr. Sofia Lamb”
― John Shirley, quote from BioShock: Rapture
“I believe in no God, no invisible man in the sky. But there is something more powerful than each of us, a combination of our efforts, a Great Chain of industry that unites us. But it is only when we struggle in our own interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide. Any man who tells you different either has his hand in your pocket, or a pistol to your neck. —Andrew Ryan”
― John Shirley, quote from BioShock: Rapture
“A man must make of his life a ladder that he never ceases to climb -- if you're not rising, you are slipping down the rungs, my friend.”
― John Shirley, quote from BioShock: Rapture
“When you serve a beer-cock an ear.”
― John Shirley, quote from BioShock: Rapture
“Okay; they’ve got to be kids—but why girls?” Fontaine asked. “People are even more protective about little girls.” Tenenbaum winced and turned back to the microscope, muttering, “For some reason girls take sea-slug implant better than boys.” Fontaine wondered what little boy they’d experimented on to determine that and what had become of him. But he didn’t really care. He didn’t. And in fact—there was one place that could supply children for all sorts of things. “So—just girls, eh? That’s okay; that’ll just be fewer bunks in the orphanage.”
― John Shirley, quote from BioShock: Rapture
“Standing at the prow of the pitching deck of the trawler, unscrewing the top of his flask, Frank Fontaine asked himself: Am I after fish—or a wild goose? Sure, he always dreamed about a big-paying long con, but this one was threatening to go on indefinitely—and though it was afternoon and supposedly summer, it was cold as a son of a bitch out here. Made a witch’s tit seem like a hot toddy. Was it worth giving up Gorland—becoming Fontaine? A city under the sea. It was becoming an obsession. Fontaine looked up at the streaming charcoal-colored clouds, wondered if it was going to storm again. Just being on this damn tub was too much like work. Talking to the men who picked up the fish for Rapture’s food supply, Fontaine had confirmed that Ryan had indeed built some gigantic underwater habitat, a kind of free-market utopia—and Fontaine knew what happened with utopias. Look at the Soviets—all those fine words about the proletariat had turned into gulags and breadlines. But a “utopia” was pure opportunity for a man like him. When this undersea utopia fell apart, he’d be there, with a whole society to feast on. Long as he didn’t step too hard on Ryan’s toes, he could build up an organization, get away with a pile of loot. But he had to get down to Rapture first … The trawler lurched, and so did Fontaine’s stomach. A small craft was being lowered over the side of the platform ship—a thirty-foot gig. Men descended”
― John Shirley, quote from BioShock: Rapture
“If the modern world were a patient in my care...” She shook her head. “I would diagnose it suicidal.”
― John Shirley, quote from BioShock: Rapture
John Shirley
Born place: in Houston, Texas, The United States
Born date February 10, 1953
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“Tarzan hungry, dijo el Mumintroll trepando una liana. Tarzan eat now!
¿Qué dice?, preguntó Snif
Dice que ahora va a comer, dijo la señorita Snork. Verás, es lo único que sabe hacer. Habla en inglés como todos los que viven en la selva.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Finn Family Moomintroll
“The work of each individual contributes to a totality, and so becomes an undying part of the totality. That totality of human lives—past and present and to come—forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many tens of thousands of years and has been growing more elaborate and, on the whole, more beautiful in all that time. Even the Spacers are an offshoot of the tapestry and they, too, add to the elaborateness and beauty of the pattern. An individual life is one thread in the tapestry and what is one thread compared to the whole? Daneel, keep your mind fixed firmly on the tapestry and do not let the trailing off of a single thread affect you.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Robots and Empire
“Say it, do it, preach it, shout it, but never, absolutely never, believe your own bullshit.”
― Steve Berry, quote from The Templar Legacy
“She said that perhaps it was not so easy to be very rich; that if any one had so many things always, one might sometimes forget that every one else was not so fortunate, and that one who is rich should always be careful and try to remember.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, quote from Little Lord Fauntleroy
“It is a bitter-sweet thing, knowing two cultures. Once you leave your birthplace nothing is ever the same.”
― quote from Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris
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City of Heavenly Fir...BookQuoters 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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