Leopoldo Gout > Quotes

“To Learn is to create. Learning- whether it is programming, mathematics, art, music, poetry, biology, or chemistry- is all about breaking down walls and freeing the one thing that kept us alive: knowledge.

Knowledge expands freedom in all its forms. Knowledge breaks down walls. It liberates the oppressed. We are committed to knowledge. Knowledge as a hammer against classism, against sexism, against racism, against gender discrimination, against slavery, against bigotry, against war, against hatred. If there is darkness in the world, we will light it up.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Genius: The Game

“Like I said last time, the world our parents grew up in is history. All the old rules, we've thrown them out. We're the ones making the future. We're the founding fathers. Hand us universal Wi-Fi and soup dumplings and we'll fix the world.
So how do you fit in? What if you can't code? What if you've never been able to build anything more than a birdhouse? It doesn't matter. You've got skills that you probably disniss as tricks. That dance you can do, that song you can sing, the painting hanging in your room, those are all skills we need.
See there's a reason my status online is recruiting for the future.
We broke some eggs and we baked a cake. It was delicious, really amazing cream cheese frosting. I saved you a piece, but I don't want to give it to you. I want to teach you how to bake your own cake from scratch. Only, instead of flour and water and eggs, I want you to make something with oil paints, yarn, peptides, or computer parts.
The revolution is now. Welcome aboard. And, uh, get ready to create...”
― Leopoldo Gout, Genius: The Revolution

“baseball caps, some LEDs, wiring, two nine-volt batteries, and a green laser.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Genius: The Game

“You and I, people like us, people who aren’t jaded by experience or beaten by failure.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Genius: The Game

“there is a very fine dividing line between genius and insanity.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Genius: The Game

“They spent all their time worshipping hundreds of multifaced gods to keep the sun from extinguishing, only to have a Spaniard with gunpowder and a runny nose bring the sky crashing down. Makes you wonder how wrong we’ll be about our own judgement day. We’ve been waiting on John’s Revelation for two millennia now and one has to think about who our snot-nosed conquistador will be.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Piñata

“Even though the LEDs aren’t particularly bright, video cameras pick up any available light sources. In the cameras, the LEDs will flare crazily. It’ll look like we’ve got exploding suns for heads.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Genius: The Game

“Then we hit them with the green laser. Boom. Overwhelms their CMOS sensors and the camera goes down.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Genius: The Game

“I don’t know her well enough for that. We’re friendly, but it’s not like we have the kind of rapport that I can say, ‘My childhood friend was watching you and thinks your daughter is under demonic threat. Would you care to meet her?”
― Leopoldo Gout, Piñata

“Underneath all the fussed-over detail, he was one of us, someone who wanted to be liked, someone who wanted to belong.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Genius: The Game

“They think they’re entitled to wealth just because they’ve got slivers of power. They want to live in ivory towers and keep the rest of us out.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Genius: The Game

“I also have my larger family: my people.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Genius: The Game

“I punched small holes around the front and sides of the cap and threaded the LEDs through, arranging them in a zigzag pattern. Ten LEDs did the trick. I wired them to the nine volts, which I had stuffed into the back of the cap.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Genius: The Game

“I was considered a dangerous element. I was a rogue particle, as destructive as dark matter.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Genius: The Game

“Revolutions is the only evolution.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Genius: The Game

“There were so many people depending on my success. My family and my entire village were held right in the firm grip of the general. The weight of this left me nearly breathless with determination. I will not fail, mother.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Genius: The Game

“There's still a lot we don't know about electromagnetism, Joaquin ... When you're talking about waves that don't need air or water as a medium, signals that can move through empty space, signals of pure energy, well, who knows where they can go? If we wait long enough, four or five years, alien in the next star system could be listening to Ghost Radio. Hell, knowing our show, some of them might even be callers.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Ghost Radio

“The air around me, I realized suddenly, was full of voices. Every person who was on the phone in the airport. Every TV newscaster, every traffic report, every security guard with a walkie-talkie. What were these waves taking from us? I sat in front of a mike, sending my voice out across the country five hours a day—what were they taking from me?”
― Leopoldo Gout, Ghost Radio

“There's something indecent about talking or writing about love. It cheapens the feeling. And it's an emotion that none of us understand, even when we think we do.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Ghost Radio

“tzitzimimeh?”
― Leopoldo Gout, Piñata

“Life is a magnificent and incredible journey. One filled with endless challenges. It is a trek across the Arctic! A quest through the Sahara! An interstellar jounrey! It is true, as Eldon said, that the journey is the destination.”
― Leopoldo Gout

“We think we're so smart and progressive. But when we idolize technology, even for good reasons, or for silly reasons, even for Ghost Radio, we're pushing forward the phalanxes of empire.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Ghost Radio

“For me, radio was a space for reflection. On the air, I submerged myself in music and literature. I listened along with my audience; I read to myself and to them, I discussed all kinds of ideas with total strangers. It was the perfect medium: intense, warm, interactive, and highly volatile. From my very first session in the broadcast studio, I felt like I was in a time capsule, a sensory-deprivation chamber. It was a protective bubble where nothing and no one could touch me. The semidarkness, the illuminated panel, and the on-air light combined to create a cozy, womblike environment, a sort of cosmic solitude. I had the sensation of floating in space, completely isolated from the real world. My only human contact was with the disembodied voices of callers. Everything seemed dusted with an ethereal—yes, I'll say it—ghostly quality. I could touch and hear the whole world, while no one could be sure of my existence; I was just one more voice in the teeming concert of hertzian waves. It was a land of the blind, where we were guided by sounds and voices, and space took the shape our words gave it. We transformed it with every description, comment, insult, or digression. It was almost like death, floating aimlessly at night, listening to spectral voices that in turn spoke about specters, indifferent to their own condition.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Ghost Radio

“Alondra wasn't fond of surprised, and she was even less fond of hysterics. Maybe it was her Irish blood—she tended to dismiss people who gesticulated wildly or raised their voices to say things that didn't seem particularly urgent.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Ghost Radio

“Verón wasn’t a fan of phone calls. He had very few friends and wasn’t interested in reaching out to the ones he had left.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Piñata

“As he stood there, listening to the lyrics, he realized the songs could be viewed as a rallying cry for the Toltecs. Kill the poor with empire, kill them with a false sense of nobility, kill them in their quest for technology. Their quest for the machine.”
― Leopoldo Gout, Ghost Radio