“Tools are neither demonic nor divine. It’s all about who wields them.”
“Best way to save humanity is to turn the monsters against one another.”
“...facts never prevent the ignorant from jerking their knees into the groin of science.”
“...survival is a dance between our needs and our consciences.”
“In a population of hundreds of millions, such a small number of people is a mere drop in the bucket... but enough drops can make any bucket overflow”
“Hole..." He grips Risa's hand tighter. "Hole, Risa, hole..." And she smiles "Yes, Connor," she says. "You're whole. You're finally whole.”
“We must always be careful of the actions we take, for there are always unintended consequences. Sometimes they are serendipitous, other times they are appalling, but those consequences are always there. We must tread lightly in this world...until we are sure of foot.”
“AWOL’s most valuable commodity: hope. It’s something in short supply for those who have been deemed not worth the sum of their parts.”
“We are not the enemy,” he says. “That’s what the enemy always says.”
“The accountant lingers at his children's doorway a moment more, listening to the easy rhythm of their breathing, and something cold moves through him, like the passage of a ghost - but he know that's not it. It's more like the portent of a future. A future that must never come to pass...
...and for the first time, he gives rise to a thought that is silently echoed in millions of homes that night.
My God... what have we done?”
“... but how can you live in the moment when all you want is for the moment to end?”
“And so, as the mob backs away to give them space... as the riot police holster their weapons, standing down, and as Risa takes the podium, calming the crowd with a voice as soothing as a sonata, Connor Lassiter holds his family like he'll never let them go.”
“Today he failed to change the world. As for tomorrow, who can tell?”
“I never met the boy, or his parents, but I see kids like him every day.” Sonia tells Connor. “Their world is shattered, and they’re so desperate for validation that they’d blow themselves up to get it. Any parent who disowns that boy after what he did, and didn’t do . . . doesn’t deserve to have children at all, much less a child to give away.”
“You should learn to relish the hunger more than the feast, lest you become a glutton.”
“You are only one boy, with one voice...If you keep trying to be a choir, you'll lose that voice, and then who will hear you?”
“You see, Risa, survival is a dance between our needs and our consciences. When the need is great enough, and the music loud enough, we can stomp conscience into the ground.'
Risa closes her eyes. She knows the dance...
'It's the way of the world,' Divan continues. 'Look at unwinding, society's grand gavotte of denial. There will, no doubt, come a time when people look to one another and say, 'My God, what have we done?' But I don't believe it will happen any time soon. Until then, the dance must have music; the chorus must have its voice. Give it that voice, Risa. Play for me.'
But Risa's fingers offer him nothing, and the Orgao Organico holds the obdurate, unyielding silence of the grave.”
“I'm a savant when it comes to character judgment," he tells her. "For instance, most people wouldn't see anything in you besides attitude and a need for stronger deodorant, but I think you can handle the storks almost as well as Connor handled the Graveyard."
Bam gives him a halfhearted glare. "Can you ever give a compliment without also making it an insult?"
"No," he admits. "Not possible. It's the essence of my charm.”
“facts never prevent the ignorant from jerking their knees into the groin of science.”
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Divan says with pride. “I purchased it from a Brazilian artist, who has apparently made a career working in flesh. He claims his artwork is to protest unwinding, but I ask you, how much of a protest can it be if he uses the unwound for his art?”
“We all need a moratorium on misery now and then.”
“There isn't one single thing that will end unwinding. It will take a hodgepodge of random events that come together in just the right way and at just the right time to remind society it's got a conscience. -Sonia”
“You’re not eating, Cam,” Roberta says as she comes out to join him across the table. Roberta—his creator, or builder—whatever term one gives to the individual who conceived of you. Perhaps, then, it should be “mother,” though he’s loath to use the word.”
“I'm sure my parents must be proud. Or horrified. Or are bitterly arguing about whether they're proud or horrified, and have already hired lawyers to resolve the dispute. -Hayden Upchurch”
“I love you, Risa," he says. "Every last part of me.”
“When your parents turn you in to the Juvenile Authority - and they will - I will not shed a single tear for you, Connor Lassiter.”
“I must be doing something right if the crazies think I'm as powerful as the Antichrist.”
“Are people really such sheep that they can be fooled? Maybe. Or maybe with so much conflicting media, people just shut down. Maybe that’s the point.”
“Are people really such sheep that they can be fooled?”
“The night-haunts never lie. They could, if they wanted to, but they don’t really see the point. The truth is so much more dangerous than a lie.”
“most horrid sound in the world, that of the once-was: alive in the past, perishing in the present, a corpse made of dust in the future.”
“Though, like Everhard, they did not dream of the nature of it, there were men, even before his time, who caught glimpses of the shadow. John C. Calhoun said: "A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks." And that great humanist, Abraham Lincoln, said, just before his assassination: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
“It’s okay to feel nervous, Nina. You’re not supposed to be comfortable. Stop trying to fight it and just let those feelings be there.”
“When Noah Crawford wanted something, you couldn’t bat a lash around him or you were going to miss seeing how he got it. Not that I was complaining or anything.”
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