Cody Arant

“Not a single person in that audience believes for a second that what I do up there is real,” he says, gesturing in the general direction of the stage. “That’s the beauty of it. Have you seen the contraptions these magicians build to accomplish the most mundane feats? They are a bunch of fish covered in feathers trying to convince the public they can fly, and I am simply a bird in their midst. The audience cannot tell the difference beyond knowing that I am better at it.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“It worked okay.”
― William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive

“But did it wake, Kumiko wondered, when the alley was empty? Did its laser vision scan the silent fall of midnight snow?”
― William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive

“He couldn’t remember when he hadn’t been able to remember, but sometimes he almost could. That was why he had built the Judge, because he’d done something—it hadn’t been anything much, but he’d been caught doing it, twice—and been judged for it, and sentenced, and then the sentence was carried out and he hadn’t been able to remember, not anything, not for more than five minutes at a stretch. Stealing cars. Stealing rich people’s cars. They made sure you remembered what you did.”
― William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive