“It would make things easier for both of us, especially for you, if we could forgo the part of this conversation where you take me for a complete idiot...”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“Family has a way of bringing out the worst in people. Every people.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“If you fall in love with someone, there’s a good chance the person won’t love you back. Hatred, though, is usually mutual. If you despise someone, it’s pretty much a given they’re also not your biggest fan.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“I never understood why people use words they do not understand.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“People often confuse leadership with managerial skills.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“Stories are there to entertain, preserve history, or serve a societal purpose of some kind.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“Generally speaking, people tend not to question what they’ve been told was true. Scientists are no different; they’ve just been told a lot more things.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“I was smart enough to know it was wrong, but not brave enough to stop them.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“Perhaps, deep down inside that rugged shell of yours, there is a little girl desperately waiting for her Prince Charming to propose."
"Of course there is. Only until now, I'd been pretty successful at keeping that little brat's mouth shut.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“North Korean troops gathering… inside North Korea.
That is unheard of."
"They were massing very close to the border."
"North Korea is the size of Ohio. It would be geographically challenging for them to gather very far from the border.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“She has more issues than the New York Times.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“Perhaps, deep down inside that rugged shell of yours, there is a little girl desperately waiting for her Prince Charming to propose."
"Of course there is. Only until now, I'd been pretty successful at keeping that little brat's mouth shut."
"What will your answer be if he asks?"
"You're funny. He can't ask. I'll find a way to be bitchy enough for the next forty years so that perfect moment never comes."
"You seem to have a good handle on that little girl after all.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“Yes. This, all that's happening now, this is your bat mitzvah. You can play with atoms, you can sit with the grown-ups."
"What does that mean for us?"
"That means you won't be forgiven for childhood mistakes anymore.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“I thought something bad might have happened to him. It's nice to know he just doesn't want to talk to me.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“It does not matter. You train your soldiers to kill using video games. They blow enough people up on their computer and it becomes easier for them to kill with a real weapon. Why do you think your government funds so many war and terrorism movies? Hollywood does your dirty work for you. Had 9/11 happened twenty years earlier, the country would have been in chaos, but people have seen enough bad things on their television screen to prepare them for just about anything. We do not really need to talk about government conspiracies.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“What I am is very much a function of what I am not. If the "other" is the Muslim world, then I am the Judeo-Christian world. IF the other is from thousands of light-years away, I am simply human. Redefine alterity and you can erase boundaries.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“I have always been thoroughly bewildered by North Korea. They cannot be threatened, as they feel themselves superior to the one making the threat. They cannot be reasoned with, and most importantly, they are 100 percent convinced of their righteousness, so they cannot be bought. Megalomaniacs with delusions of grandeur are notoriously difficult to handle, but how generations of them can follow one another is beyond me.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“I think people are scared, and dumb, and selfish on their own, but put enough of them together and they'll be half-decent”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“It's easier to be just one more soldier in a giant army than being the whole army by yourself.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“Mr. Couture is not an American citizen. He is from Montreal. It is a large city, about the size of Boston, in that very large country just north of here. You may have heard of it. They play hockey. —”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“Deadwood sure isn’t thriving, but it’s still standing. And the landscape is breathtaking. It’s sitting right on the edge of the Black Hills National Forest, with its eerie rock formations, beautiful pine forests, barren rock, canyons, and creeks. I can’t think of a more beautiful place on Earth. I can understand why someone would want to build something there.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“We wouldn't really see anything at night, from this altitude, but it still felt good, like a layover in Paris. You never leave the airport, but even so, you're in Paris.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“People who owe me favors are called friends.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“If you are a scientist you believe that it is good to find out how the world works; that it is good to find out what the realities are; that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and its values.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“—So it is not your fault if people have a problem with you. That is just who you are. —Something like that.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
“You’re right, I don’t trust people easily, but I have faith in numbers. —Interesting. —I do. I think people are scared, and dumb, and selfish on their own, but put enough of them together and they’ll be half-decent.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, quote from Sleeping Giants
Sylvain Neuvel
Born place: Canada
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“He was an old Drag man with his bit getting short. He was the first to attempt to teach me to control my emotions. He would say, “Always remember whether you be sucker or hustler in the world out there, you’ve got that vital edge if you can iron-clad your feelings. I picture the human mind as a movie screen. If you’re a dopey sucker, you’ll just sit and watch all kinds of mindwrecking, damn fool movies on that screen.” He said. “Son, there is no reason except a stupid one for anybody to project on that screen anything that will worry him or dull that vital edge. After all, we are the absolute bosses of that whole theatre and show in our minds. We even write the script. So always write positive, dynamic scripts and show only the best movies for you on that screen whether you are pimp or priest.” His rundown of his screen theory saved my sanity many years later. He was a twisted wise man and one day when he wasn’t looking, a movie flashed on the screen. The title was “Death For an Old Con.”
― Iceberg Slim, quote from Pimp: The Story of My Life
“I don't myself think much of science as a phase of human development. It has given us a lot of ingenious toys; they take our attention away from the real problems, of course, and since the problems are insoluble, I suppose we ought to be grateful for distraction. But the fact is, the human mind, the individual mind, has always been made more interesting by dwelling on the old riddles, even if it makes nothing of them. Science hasn't given us any new amazements, except of the superficial kind we get from witnessing dexterity and sleight-of-hand. It hasn't given us any richer pleasures, as the Renaissance did, nor any new sins-not one! Indeed, it takes our old ones away. It's the laboratory, not the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world. You'll agree there is not much thrill about a physiological sin. We were better off when even the prosaic matter of taking nourishment could have the magnificence of a sin. I don't think you help people by making their conduct of no importance-you impoverish them. As long as every man and woman who crowded into the cathedrals on Easter Sunday was a principal in a gorgeous drama with God, glittering angels on one side and the shadows of evil coming and going on the other, life was a rich thing. The king and the beggar had the same chance at miracles and great temptations and revelations. And that's what makes men happy, believing in the mystery and importance of their own little individual lives. It makes us happy to surround our creature needs and bodily instincts with as much pomp and circumstance as possible. Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had.”
― Willa Cather, quote from The Professor's House
“The profound originality of a divine-human pact in which both parties complain endlessly about each other has too rarely been acknowledged as such.”
― Jack Miles, quote from God: A Biography
“No matter where I go, sadness follows. No matter how much time passes it won't go away. You get only one heart when you're born, and you can't turn it in or get it repaired. The only thing that fills it is more sadness. I'm surprised there's any room left in there at all.”
― Miyuki Miyabe, quote from Brave Story
“Hey. What is it that famous person said? 'It'll all work out in the end, and if it doesn't, that means it's not the end yet'?”
― Lauren Myracle, quote from Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks
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