Charlie Jane Anders > Quotes

“You know... no matter what you do, people are going to expect you to be someone you're not. But if you're clever and lucky and work your butt off, then you get to be surrounded by people who expect you to be the person you wish you were.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“A society that has to burn witches to hold itself together is a society that has already failed, and just doesn't know it yet.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“Society is the choice between freedom on someone else’s terms and slavery on yours.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“Boredom is the mind’s scar tissue.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“Self-awareness paradoxically requires an awareness of the other.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“I am unflappable,” Laurence told the bus driver. Who shrugged, as if he’d thought so too, once upon a time, until someone had flapped him.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“When the world turns chaotic, we must be the better part of chaos.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“Part of how they make you obey is by making obedience seem peaceful, while resistance is violence. But really, either choice is about violence, one way or another.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, The City in the Middle of the Night

“Loose ends are cool... Loose ends mean that you are still living your life. The person who dies with the most loose ends wins.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“We don’t need better emotional communication from machines. We need people to have more empathy. The reason the Uncanny Valley exists is because humans created it to put other people into. It’s how we justify killing each other.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“Live every day as if you've come back in time from a dystopian future to try and prevent everything from breaking.”
― Charlie Jane Anders

“You never learned the secret,” said Roberta. “How to be a crazy motherfucker and get away with it. Everybody else does it. What, you didn’t think they were all sane, did you? Not a one of them. They’re all crazier than you and me put together. They just know how to fake it. You could too, but you’ve chosen to torture all of us instead. That’s the definition of evil right there: not faking it like everybody else. Because all of us crazy fuckers can’t stand it when someone else lets their crazy show. It’s like bugs under the skin. We have to destroy you. It’s nothing personal.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“On the long drive home, Laurence tuned out his parents explaining to him that life isn’t an adventure, for chrissake, life is a long slog and a series of responsibilities and demands. When Laurence was old enough to do what he liked, he would be old enough to understand he couldn’t do what he liked.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“One day the Singularity would elevate humans to cybernetic superbeings, and maybe then people would say what they meant.
Probably not, though.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“That’s the definition of evil right there: not faking it like everybody else. Because all of us crazy fuckers can’t stand it when someone else lets their crazy show.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“Love was the most susceptible to random failure of all human enterprises.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“You celebrated the small victories, and you dreamed of the big ones to come.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“I don't actually think that ethics are derived from principles. At all." Patricia scooted a little closer again and touched his arm with a few cool fingertips. "I think that the most basic thing of ethics is being aware of how your actions affect others, and having an awareness of what they want and how they feel. And that's always going to depend on who you're dealing with.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“(He had already figured out a great universal truth, that people never asked for documentation of anything, as long as you asked them for documentation first.)”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“People who told you to "think fast" were always those who thought much more slowly than you did.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“But the real point is, how do you ever know your own emotions are spontaneous and genuine, and not just a programmed set of responses?”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“Hernan always says that a perfect moment of beauty can last forever. But maybe some moments are so ugly that they never end, either. All you can do is be patient with yourself.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, The City in the Middle of the Night

“Sometimes I wish I was crazy, it would make everything easier.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“The only thing that makes life tolerable is that people forget most of the stupid things I say as soon as I finish saying them.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, The City in the Middle of the Night

“every time you solve a problem you’d cause another problem. And maybe all these plagues and droughts are nature’s way of striking a balance? We humans don’t have any natural predators left, so nature has to find other ways to handle us.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“Someone who doesn’t care if they get Tater Tots or turnip slurry is a person who has given up on life.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“If they had given standardized tests in assassin school, he would not have lasted a day.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“Maybe you don’t get to choose how you make peace, or what kind of peace you make. You count yourself lucky if peace doesn’t run away from you.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, The City in the Middle of the Night

“The bookstore had no musty “old books” smell, and instead it had a nice oaky aroma, similar to the way Laurence imagined the whiskey casks would be before you put Scotch into them for aging. This was a place where you would age well.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“There’s no starting over. There’s only starting again.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, The City in the Middle of the Night