“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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“...that's the way to tell a true story from a made-up one. A made-up story always has a neat and tidy end. But true stories don't end, at least until their heroes and heroines die, and not then really because the things they did and didn't do, sometimes live on.”
― Elspeth Huxley, quote from The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood
“9“I charge you: Be strong and resolute; do not be terrified or dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”
― quote from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures
“Love is not about romance or passion. Love is about a state of grace. You experience it when you accept the absolute truth of the other person, both the cruel and the divine, and they accept these things in you, and you find that you still long to share a life with them. To know the worst in another and still want them with all your soul. To know that they feel the same way. It is a sense of security and power. And once you have arrived at this, the richness of romance and passion that appears is not blinding. Instead, it is invulnerable and forever.”
― Cody McFadyen, quote from Shadow Man
“You don't have to chase around after creatures, Pismire had said. You watch them for long enough, and then you'll find the place to wait and they'll come to you. There's nearly always a better way of doing something.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from The Carpet People
“It was time for Cork to return to the bed in the guest room. But he lingered beside this son who trusted him lay awake knowing there were monsters in the wind outside, that his son's fear was not unjustified, and that Stevie would have to face them alone someday. There were people out there so cruel they would wound him for the pleasure of it, dreadful circumstances no man in his worst imaginings could conjure, disappointments so overwhelming they could crush his dreams like eggshells. For a child like Stevie, a child of special graces, there would be such pain that Cork nearly wept in anticipation of it. Against those monsters, a father was powerless. But again the simple terrors of the night, he would do his best.”
― William Kent Krueger, quote from Iron Lake
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