Justin Ulmer

“Herger said to me, "Be thankful, for you are fortunate."
I inquired the source of my fortune. Herger said in reply, "If you have the fear of high places, than this day you shall overcome it; and so you shall have faced a great challenge; and so you shall be adjudged a hero.”
― Michael Crichton, Eaters of the Dead

“Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales... Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“It's amazing the limitation of the human anatomy, the fact that food and air must share a common passage.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

“When the point of education becomes the production of credentials rather than the cultivation of knowledge, it forfeits the motive recognized by Aristotle: "All human beings by nature desire to know.”
― Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work