Thomas Harris

“The coronavirus crisis did not come out of the blue. It fits into a series of increasingly desperate and self-destructive societal responses to objects of fear: terrorists, global warming, coronavirus. Whenever a new object of fear arises in society, there is only one response and one defense in our current way of thinking: increased control. The fact that the human being can tolerate only a certain amount of control is completely overlooked. Coercive control leads to fear and fear leads to more coercive control. Just like that, society falls victim to a vicious circle that inevitably leads to totalitarianism, which means to extreme government control, eventually resulting in the radical destruction of both the psychological and physical integrity of human beings.”
― Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism

“Most physicians and patients believe disease risk is set by genetics. This is false, but also the most common excuse doctors give patients when we do not know the answer. We just blame it on genetics and hope you’re satisfied. Don’t be. We learned this from the studies by Nir Barzilai, MD on super centenarians at Albert Einstein Medical College. Studies on people over 100 years old showed they were all found to harbor most of the bad genes we already know about. What was very interesting, however, was that the bad genes were turned off in these people. The ultimate arbiter of a long healthy life is the expression of our genes-whether they are turned on or off. This is called the epigenetic expression of disease.”
― Jack Kruse, Epi-paleo Rx: The Prescription for Disease Reversal and Optimal Health

“Motive,” the construct said. “Real motive problem, with an AI. Not human, see?” “Well, yeah, obviously.” “Nope. I mean, it’s not human. And you can’t get a handle on it. Me, I’m not human either, but I respond like one. See?” “Wait a sec.” Case said. “Are you sentient, or not?” “Well, it feels like I am, kid, but I’m really just a bunch of ROM. It’s one of them, ah, philosophical questions, I guess. . . .” The ugly laughter sensation rattled down Case’s spine. “But I ain’t likely to write you no poem, if you follow me. Your AI, it just might. But it ain’t no way human.”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer

“Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you’d break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone, with nothing left of you but some vague memory in the mind of a fixture”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer