“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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“I wonder what would happen if you gave up your need to be right?”
― Terry Tempest Williams, quote from When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice
“Frank treated customers with the contempt Rosy had only seen before at airport passport control. Even then, she’d never heard an immigration official refer to anybody as baldy.
“Hey, baldy,” Frank had said and whistled to call a customer back as though he were down in the paddock with an unruly herd. “You forgot your juice.”
Frank held up the bottle of Tropicana orange juice. And when… baldy came back, Frank slapped the bottle into his hand as though passing him the baton in a relay race, then waved the man aside—“Go!”—and pointed at the next customer.
“What do you want?” Frank said. “Cheese? Again? That’s three cheese you’ll have had in a row. Are you eating right?”
The customer stammered.
“Eh-but-eh-but-eh-but,” Frank mimicked. “Never mind. But think up a different filling next time. And not cheese and tomato.” He shook his head and made up the roll.”
― R.G. Manse, quote from Screw Friendship
“He examined the paper, his eyes bobbing as he counted the pieces, and sighed, shoulders slumping. “I’m going to teach you something I really shouldn’t be teaching you.”
“But given the circumstances,” she urged.
He nodded. His lip quirked. “Given the circumstances. Just pretend to forget it once this is over . . . if either of us makes it past this.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
“I grew up in extreme poverty,’ said Hari Das. ‘Like me, my father was a day labourer, who also did theyyam during the season. Today theyyam can bring in much
more than labouring – in a good season, after expenses, maybe Rs 10,000 a month – but in those days earnings were very meagre; maybe only Rs 10 and bag of rice
for a single night.
‘I lost my mother when I was three years old. She had some small injury – a piece of metal pierced her foot – but it went septic, and because she couldn’t afford a
real doctor she saw a man in the village instead. He must have made it worse. Certainly he failed to cure her. She died quite unnecessarily; at least that is what I feel.”
― William Dalrymple, quote from Nine Lives
“It’s just how love gets described in the movies. Like in Sleepless in Seattle . . .” This is the movie they showed us last night. “Tom Hanks’s character is musing about why he fell in love with his dead wife, and he says that it was because she could peel an apple in one long strip, or something like that. And I was reading something similar in a book recently, only that was about peeling an orange . . . anyway . . . I’ve just never felt like the way someone peels fruit would be a reason to spend the rest of your life with them.”
― Catherine McKenzie, quote from Spin
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