Magic Anderson > Magic's Quotes

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“I'm not much but I'm all I have.”
― Philip K Dick, Martian Time-Slip

“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.”
― Philip K. Dick

“If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.”
― Philip K. Dick

“People love talking, and I have never been a huge talker. I carry on an inner monologue, but the words often don't reach my lips.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“I often don't say things out loud, even when I should. I contain and compartmentalize to a disturbing degree: In my belly-basement are hundreds of bottles of rage, despair, fear, but you'd never guess from looking at me.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“In my biology class, we'd talked about the definition of life: to be classified as a living creature, a thing needs to eat, breathe, reproduce, and grow. Dogs do, rocks don't, trees do, plastic doesn't. Fire, by that definition, is vibrantly alive. It eats everything from wood to flesh, excreting the waste as ash, and it breathes air just like a human, taking in oxygen and emitting carbon. Fire grows, and as it spreads, it creates new fires that spread out and make new fires of their own. Fire drinks gasoline and excretes cinders, it fights for territory, it loves and hates. Sometimes when I watch people trudging through their daily routines, I think that fire is more alive than we are–brighter, hotter, more sure of itself and where it wants to go. Fire doesn't settle; fire doesn't tolerate; fire doesn't 'get by.'
Fire does.
Fire is.”
― Dan Wells, I Am Not a Serial Killer

“It was a low-stress group, they didn’t argue much or antagonize each other for fun, and were fairly restful to be around, as long as they didn’t try to talk or interact with me in any way.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful I dropped to 97 percent efficiency. I’d rather climb back into Hostile One’s mouth.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“You may have noticed that when I do manage to care, I’m a pessimist.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“Gurathin turned to me. "So you don't have a governor module, but we could punish you by looking at you."

I looked at him. "Probably, right up until I remember I have guns built into my arms.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“I remember every word ever said to me." That was a lie. Who would want that? Most of it I delete from permanent memory.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“I hate having emotions about reality; I’d much rather have them about Sanctuary Moon.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“The sense of urgency just wasn’t there. Also, you may have noticed, I don’t care.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“I don’t know why, because it’s one of those things I’m not contractually obligated to care about.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“This is why I didn’t want to come. I’ve got four perfectly good humans here and I didn’t want them to get killed by whatever took out DeltFall. It’s not like I cared about them personally, but it would look bad on my record, and my record was already pretty terrible.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“murderbot + actual human = awkwardness.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“His eyes, blind to external reality but highly perceptive in the realm of the inner life, rose from the book to the ceiling and returned to the book.”
― Machado de Assis, O Alienista

“Father Lopes confessed he had never imagined that so many madmen, and such mysterious cases of madness, could exist in the world.”
― Machado de Assis

“People like me know that there is no magic. There is only the grind. Work looks like magic to those unwilling to do it.”
― David Wong, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

“If Zoey Ashe had known she was being stalked by a man who intended to kill her and then slowly eat her bones, she would have worried more about that and less about getting her cat off the roof.”
― David Wong, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

“This whole thing happened because I got up last night, because my cat got hungry and I had to go find a fork, and I stumbled into that conference room and saw Will and Ling and their cop friend messing with a severed hand.” Budd said, “A severed what?” and Andre said, “Your cat eats with a fork?”
― David Wong, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

“Tabula Rasa can make you feel like you’ve taken a train to Bizarro world. I remember my very first night here—and this is goin’ on fifteen years ago—I was takin’ a walk downtown, tryin’ to get a feel for the place. And I’m walkin’ through a construction site—and it was all construction sites back then, you understand—and I come across this hole in the ground, ’bout ten feet in diameter. I look down and I can’t see a bottom, so I pull a quarter out of my pocket and toss it down, and listen for a clink or a splash. Nothin’. Coin just tumbles into the darkness and disappears. So now I’m real curious, and I look around for somethin’ else to throw down there. And teeterin’ right on the edge of the hole is an old refrigerator. So, I circle around and I give it a good kick and it tumbles down into the hole. I hear it bang off the side a few times but once again, there’s no crash, no splash, like it just kept fallin’ forever. It was the strangest thing. So I figure this is the first of this city’s many unknowable mysteries and I start to go on about my way. But then I see the second strange thing—this goat, it goes flying past me, in midair. Like it was fired from a cannon. And now I think I’m losin’ my mind, like maybe it’s not just tobacco in my cigar, if you know what I’m sayin’. So I walk along and I come across a guy sittin’ on the curb and I say, ‘Holy cow, partner, did you see that goat?’ And the fella says, ‘Well, that’s my goat.’ And I say, ‘Well, I hate to tell ya, but I think it’s gone. It took off flyin’.’ And the fella says, ‘That’s impossible. I had him chained to a refrigerator.’” Zoey stared for a moment, then snorted a laugh that almost caused her to choke on her sandwich.”
― David Wong, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

“Hi Mom. I just wanted to let you know I’m okay. I don’t know if you watch the news but it looks like I inherited like a billion dollars in drug money or something. Can you find a lawyer? Just tell him I’m in danger of getting murdered or going to jail for having a bunch of heroin warehouses and mafia money that I didn’t even ask for, so whatever he can do to fix that would be great—SHUT UP! Sorry, I wasn’t talking to you, Arthur’s robot toilet is hassling me. Oh also my bodyguard shot a guy last night, hope that’s okay. He had super powers, they all do. I don’t know what’s up with that. Anyway, call me.”
Well, that should set her mind at ease.”
― Jason Pargin, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

“Well, I’m going to tell you the best and the worst thing you’ve ever heard. Heroes aren’t born. You just go out there and grind it out. You fail and you look foolish and you just keep grinding. There is nothing else. There is no ‘chosen one,’ there is no destiny, nobody wakes up one day and finds out they’re amazing at something. There’s just slamming your head into the wall, refusing to take no for an answer. Being relentless, until either the wall or your head breaks. You want to be a hero? You don’t have to make some grand decision. There’s no inspirational music, there’s no montage. You just don’t quit.”
― David Wong, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

“You can lie to yourself, say that you never had a choice, that you weren’t cut out for this. But deep down you’ll know. You’ll know that humans aren’t cut out for anything. We cut ourselves out. Slowly, with a rusty knife.”
― David Wong, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

“That’s what it’s like being poor—choices are something you sit around and dream about having, some day after you strike it rich.”
― David Wong, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

“Yes. That, right there, is the difference between the heroes and the nobodies. The difference between people like you and people like me. People like me know that there is no magic. There is only the grind. Work looks like magic to those unwilling to do it.”
― David Wong, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

“But reality really is a mess, and yet it's exciting. The basic thing is, how frightened are you of chaos? And how happy are you with order? Van Vogt influenced me so much because he made me appreciate a mysterious chaotic quality in the universe which is not to be feared.”
― Philip K. Dick, Philip K. Dick: The Last Interview and Other Conversations

“So this, thought Jan, with a resignation that lay beyond all sadness, was the end of man. It was an end that no prophet had foreseen – an end that repudiated optimism and pessimism alike.

Yet it was fitting: it had the sublime inevitability of a great work of art. Jan had glimpsed the universe in all its immensity, and knew now that it was no place for man. He realized at last how vain, in the ultimate analysis, had been the dream that lured him to the stars.

For the road to the stars was a road that forked in two directions, and neither led to a goal that took any account of human hopes or fears.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End