Nick Bilton · 299 pages
Rating: (10.8K votes)
“People don’t invent things on the Internet. They simply expand on an idea that already exists.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“The press pass and the a title of “journalist” had been replaced by a smart phone and a Twitter account.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Some people are destined for greatness; others fall up a hill to get there.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“In the past, history was always written by the victors. But in the age of Twitter, history is written by everyone.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“It was a testament to the resilience of humanity. Give a man a tree and he will make it into a boat; give him a leaf and he will curve it into a cup and drink water from it; give him a rock and he will make a weapon to protect himself and his family. Give a man a small box and a limit of 140 characters to type into it, and he will adapt it to fight an oppressive dictatorship in the Middle East.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Give a man a tree and he will make it into a boat; give him a leaf and he will curve it into a cup and drink water from it; give him a rock and he will make a weapon to protect himself and his family. Give a man a small box and a limit of 140 characters to type into it, and he will adapt it to fight an oppressive dictatorship in the Middle East.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“When people ask Biz about his wealth, he tells them that money rarely changes people; it often just magnifies who they really are.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“A similar sound, especially light, tremulous speech or laughter.” This is it, he thought. “Agitation or excitement; flutter.” A verb. Twitter.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“It could be a technology that would erase a feeling that an entire generation felt while staring into their computer screens.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“The idea was that while one person wrote code, the other programmer would massage his or her shoulders; then they would switch.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“When Taylor had called Mark to explain the situation, Facebook's CEO had given clear instructions to shut Twitter down the second it tried to launch.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Jack and Ev looked at each other for a moment in the boardroom. At that moment neither realized that they were both fundamental to what Twitter had become. The perfect equilibrium of two different ways of looking at the world: the need to talk about yourself, compared with the need to let people talk about what was happening around them. One could never have existed without the other. That balance, or battle, had created Twitter. A tool that could be used by corporate titans and teens, by celebrities and nobodies, by government officials and revolutionaries. A place where people with fundamentally different views of the world, like Jack and Ev, could converse.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Fred wasn't convinced, telling Charlie that such a service would never work and that other companies that had tried to make Twitter-like products had all failed.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“What do you think your valuation is right now?" Mark asked as they both sat uncomfortably across from and below him, peering up at a boy who could, hypothetically speaking, quite happily buy them or murder them, all with the same exact expression on his face.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“This status thing could help connect people to those who weren’t there. It wasn’t just about sharing what kind of music you were listening to or where you were at that moment; it was about connecting people and making them feel less alone. It could be a technology that would erase a feeling that an entire generation felt while staring into their computer screens. An emotion that Noah and Jack and Biz and Ev had grown up feeling, finding solace in a monitor. An emotion that Noah felt night after night as his marriage and company fell apart: loneliness.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“money rarely changes people; it often just magnifies who they really are.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Loneliness is not so much where you are, but instead is your state of mind" - Commander Hadfield”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Loneliness is not so much where you are, but instead is your state of mind - Commander Hadfield”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Even on the Internet, the elephant that never forgets, memories are still forgotten.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“But the mood wasn’t jovial. There was no laughing. There was only tension that could have been sliced with a tweet and sadness, even among the winning team.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“If there is no X to mark the spot, there is no spot.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Jack had continued to see Twitter as a way to talk about what was happening to him. Ev was starting to see it as a view into what was happening in the world.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Ev had known all along that it had never been about the money. A billionaire still throws up into a garbage can. It was about making a dent in the universe.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“July had already been a busy month as Twitter had also moved into new offices: a fancy, modern, loftlike space with lots of windows and room to grow. Among the fun features they had added to the office (a living-room setup with a couch and video games, a large red phone booth, and a fully stocked kitchen with cereal and other snacks), Jack had suggested putting in a Radiohead room. “It can play Radiohead twenty-four hours a day!” he said excitedly when suggesting the idea.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“No, you didn’t invent Twitter,” Ev replied. “I didn’t invent Twitter either. Neither did Biz. People don’t invent things on the Internet. They simply expand on an idea that already exists.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“All forms of technology, with the exception of paper, are strictly forbidden inside any high-level Top Secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information, or TS/SCI area,”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Hey, Ev,” Blaine yelled, his long, pin-straight hair hanging down over his shoulders. “Don’t take less than a hundred million dollars!”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Commander Hadfield wrote. “Loneliness is not so much where you are, but instead is your state of mind.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
Nick Bilton
Born place: Darlington, The United Kingdom
See more on GoodReads
“We’re getting out of here,” she said. “The store will try to stop us. It’ll disorient you, get inside your head, try to confuse you and control you. But if you stay focused, you can block it out. You have to fight, do you understand?”
― Grady Hendrix, quote from Horrorstör
“A moment later, all of the men at the party, stupefied by the way the hooker had gone banshee,”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Guest Room
“One feather is of no use to me, I must have the whole bird.”
― Jacob Grimm, quote from Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales
“Iwent to school with African-American girls during my entire adolescence in Michigan and never noticed them as potential girlfriends, never even wanted to meet them. How did that happen? I'm nine thousand miles from home and a pernicious wall of segregation I never noticed in high school suddenly materialises. A young man should travel.”
― quote from Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
“Greatness without models? Inconceivable. One could not be the thing itself - Reality. One must be satisfied with symbols. Make it the object of imitation to reach and release the high qualities. Make peace therefore with intermediacy and representations. Otherwise the individual must be the failure he now sees and knows himself to be.”
― Saul Bellow, quote from Mr. Sammler's Planet
Lucifer's Hammer
Tell the Wolves I'm...
Duma Key
The Crossing
Trickster's Choice
Storm BornBookQuoters 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.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
