Greg Hickey > Quotes

“I decided to write Parabellum because I was personally baffled by the frequency of mass shootings in the United States. The Sandy Hook school shooting was the once that really got the wheels turning. I just couldn't understand why anyone would do such a thing, and I felt compelled to grapple with all the issues at play.”
― Greg Hickey, Parabellum

“These are composed of logic symbols. If you were to read each chapter title in sequence, it would spell out the steps in a logical proof. The letter symbols are explained at the very beginning of the book. The other symbols are logical operators. So for example, the chapter title “S(t2) <—> C(t2)” means both 1) if there is a brain State at time t2, then there is a corresponding Choice made at time t2 (e.g. if you think you prefer chocolate ice cream to vanilla, then you will order chocolate instead of vanilla), and 2) if there is a Choice made at time t2, then there must have been a corresponding brain State at time t2.” - Author Greg Hickey on the symbols in the chapter titles of The Friar’s Lantern”
― Greg Hickey, The Friar's Lantern

“A lot of the psychological insights [in Parabellum] stemmed from my personal experiences. For example, I was a college athlete, so I could imagine what the ex-athlete was going through when her sports career ended. I'm a little emotionally detached (which helps in a field like forensics where I can see some unpleasant things), so I could identify with the detachment of the programmer. I tried to take my experiences and push them a little farther to develop characters with more serious psychological issues. And I read several memoirs to get a sense of what it feels like to live with depression, PTSD, brain trauma, etc.”
― Greg Hickey, Parabellum

“For twenty years, he had existed at moderate intensity. He had experienced hills of joy, mounds of contentment, dips of disappointment and gentle valleys of sorrow spread more or less evenly over time so that those slight changes in elevation faded to background noise when viewed at the appropriate scale. He had then crammed Everests of beauty and exhilaration and Marianas of agony and terror into the space of a few wartorn years, punching a hole through the relief map of his life." (From Parabellum, by Greg Hickey, pp. 183 - 184)”
― Greg Hickey, Parabellum

“Yet Judith Alethea is hardly more distinct as she tiptoes out of the glassy smog, her face a spilt cream smudge of makeup caked on and cracking at the corners of her eyes that intensifies her middle age instead of hiding it. A hesitant and excitable slap of putty, thoroughly kneaded by life and imprinted with its multilayered, multicolored narratives like transposed comic strips, she wears a thick, bunchy, ecru suit and hugs an equally bland oversized purse to her hip as she slowly minces into the witness box and huddles down in the seat. The big-boned, moon-faced court reporter leans forward to hear as Alethea swears her oath, while Shannon Gray hovers by the witness box as if attending to a senile aunt.”
― Greg Hickey, The Friar's Lantern