Susan Brown > Susan's Quotes

“the kid can learn, but he only wants to do one thing at a time. He could spend days on end hunched over just one page of a botany book and then wouldn’t talk about anything else. Then the next week it would be astronomy. He’s become reasonably literate, though, and he’s not bad at math either.”
― Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson, The Flatey Enigma

“This method of cutting hair struck Kjartan as being closer to sheepshearing than hairdressing. The cutting was also proceeding slowly because the clippers were stiff and painful on Sigurbjörn’s head.”
― Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson, The Flatey Enigma

“When I became convinced that the Universe is natural – that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world -- not even in infinite space. I was free -- free to think, to express my thoughts -- free to live to my own ideal -- free to live for myself and those I loved -- free to use all my faculties, all my senses -- free to spread imagination's wings -- free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope -- free to judge and determine for myself -- free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the "inspired" books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past -- free from popes and priests -- free from all the "called" and "set apart" -- free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies -- free from the fear of eternal pain -- free from the winged monsters of the night -- free from devils, ghosts and gods. For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought -- no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings -- no chains for my limbs -- no lashes for my back -- no fires for my flesh -- no master's frown or threat – no following another's steps -- no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds.

And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain -- for the freedom of labor and thought -- to those who fell on the fierce fields of war, to those who died in dungeons bound with chains -- to those who proudly mounted scaffold's stairs -- to those whose bones were crushed, whose flesh was scarred and torn -- to those by fire consumed -- to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“The foursome settled down in Kate's living room, which was furnished academically, i.e., from flea markets and yard sales.”
― Anonymous

“He remembered the Professor’s advice to his eager employees during his first year: “With us, feelings are described through images, and in the world of television, there are only seven feelings: well-being, Schadenfreude, sentimentality, shock, outrage, disgust, and anger. Nothing else.”
― Erik Valeur, The Seventh Child

“Dark pools were another rogue spawn of the new financial marketplace. Private stock exchanges, run by the big brokers, they were not required to reveal to the public what happened inside them. They reported any trade they executed, but they did so with sufficient delay that it was impossible to know exactly what was happening in the broader market at the moment the trade occurred.”
― Michael Lewis, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt

“The simple reason Goldman wasn’t making much of the big money now being made in the stock market was that the stock market had become a war of robots, and Goldman’s robots were slow.”
― Michael Lewis, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt

“We’ve had a number of applications but there was no one with the right mix of technical knowledge and personal despair.”
― Nathaniel Rich, Odds Against Tomorrow

“I had been using Johnson & Johnson's No More Tears since childhood as it kept its promises. I was distrustful; I had never been popular. At school my greatest leap had been from weirdo to perceived goth .”
― Anonymous

“I reminded myself that I was a man of science, even if I did usually get a C in it.”
― Ernest Cline, Armada

“He had a reasonable job as an actuary (whatever that was),”
― Ruth Rendell, The Babes In The Wood

“He turned on to the track and wondered why no birds were singing. The only sound he could hear was the buzz and rattle of a drill, which he assumed to be the farmer doing something to a fence. It was, in fact, a woodpecker whose presence would have thrilled him had he known what it was.”
― Ruth Rendell, The Babes In The Wood

“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“When I was young,” I explained, “I looked to God to find answers. When God didn’t have anything, I looked for answers in people, but all they said was, ‘Relax, go with it.’” “‘Go with it’?” She queried my American idiom, pronounced in German, using her native Russian. “Don’t fight against inevitability,” I translated loosely. “Life is until it is not, so why get fussed? Don’t hurt anyone, try not to give your dinner guests food poisoning, be clean in word and deed – what else is there? Just be a decent person in a decent world.”
― Claire North, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

“Men must be decent first and brilliant later, otherwise you’re not helping people, just servicing the machine.”
― Claire North, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

“No one here gets out alive.”
― Jim Morrison