b38baba
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This isn't an accident; this happens because to people at the top, the scariest thing is how many people there are below. They need to watch us. They need to monitor what we're thinking. It's the only thing between them and a guillotine.
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Max Barry |
852dff6
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It is a building designed by committee: all they have been able to agree on is that it should be rectangular, have windows, and not fall over.
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committees
humour
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Max Barry |
7dc9f9b
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Civilizations rose and fell; what caused them to be remembered was not their contribution to knowledge or culture, not even the size of their empires, but rather how much force they extorted upon the landscape.
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Max Barry |
020d8d5
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It was pointless to ponder who I was because I was whichever combination of chemicals happened to be sloshing around at that time. So I decided not to search for a true self. I decided to choose who I wanted to be.
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Max Barry |
55eab5b
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We attempt to conceal ourselves, Emily, but the truth is we do not entirely want to be concealed. We want to be found.
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Max Barry |
7571866
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I read once that you need two things to be happy. Any two of health, money and love. You can cover the absence of one with the other two. I drew comfort from this idea while I was fully bodied, employed, and unloved. It made me feel I wasn't missing much. But now I realized this was unmitigated bullshit, because health and money did not compare with love at all. I had a girl in a hospital bed who liked me and I didn't know where that might ..
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love
money
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Max Barry |
da184f1
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What we're doing, or, I should say, what doing, since no one has taught me any good words, is dropping recipes into people's brains to cause a neurochemical reaction to knock out the filters. Tie them up just long enough to slip an instruction past. And you do by speaking a string of words crafted for the person's psychographic segment. Probably words that were crafted decades ago and have been strengthened ever since. And it's a of w..
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mind-control
scary
words
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Max Barry |
47e9030
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What was it Like?" "What was what like?" he said, although he knew. "Quick, I imagine. But you must have perceived something. A split second of vanishing awareness. A grasping at a shrinking light." "It was like being fucked in the brain."
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lexicon
poets
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Max Barry |
5d757b0
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I don't play the lottery. I don't care what my horoscope says. I think most things about the world could be improved if people thought more about what they're doing. When someone gets upset with their computer, I tend to side with the computer. I think art is overrated, and bridges are underrated. In fact, I don't understand why bridges aren't art. It seems to me they're penalized for having a use. If I make a bridge that ends in midair, th..
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Max Barry |
df60a1b
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She decided to sleep with him and get it over with. It was the only way. He had become an annoying jingle, striking in the shower, or at work, or just as she was falling asleep. She had to at least kiss him deeply and completely, in a way that left nothing behind. So she could move on. So she could stop imagining it. She couldn't keep losing herself to the jingle. It was impairing her ability to function.
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harry-wilson
jingle
love
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Max Barry |
ef22261
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A panic state is not helpful to good decision making.
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Max Barry |
3e75fdb
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'Two things.' 'Name them. I am instructing you to name them.' 'I don't think you've been in love. Not recently, anyway. I'm not sure you remember what it's like. It compromises you. It takes over your body. Like a bareword. I think love is a bareword. That's the first thing.' Yeats didn't react. If anything, he seemed baffled. 'The second thing is I wouldn't characterize Harry as indecisive and untrained with weapons.'
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barewords
compromise
lexicon
love
underestimation
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Max Barry |
870df3e
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I'm not a privacy nut, and I don't care that much if these organizations want to know where I go and what I buy. But what bothers me is how HARD they're all working for that data, how much money they're spending, and how they never admit that's what they want. It means that information must be really valuable for some reason, and I just wonder to who and why.
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Max Barry |
05e21f8
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She could taste loss in the back of her throat so badly that she could vomit.
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Max Barry |
194f760
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I tended to be skeptical of anything that couldn't be measured, written down, and independently verified across a series of double-blind tests. But this was hard data. Lola's heart beat fastest for me.
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love
science
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Max Barry |
c66d937
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intransigent." "Well,"
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Max Barry |
5c759fa
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She put the words back in the envelope, because fuck doing that again.
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Max Barry |
2fa7bfc
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You've delegated the ability to make up your mind.
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Max Barry |
9944660
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After a while, he sat. She leaned her head on his shoulder. She felt very close to him. "I promise not to turn you into my thought slave," she said, and felt him smile a little. But she had thought about it."
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Max Barry |
2bc570c
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My own fault. The equipment had safeties but your primary piece of protective equipment was your brain. There was a presumption that anyone entering this room was intelligent enough to keep away from hot things, sharp things, and things carrying large stores of momentum.
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machine-man
safety
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Max Barry |
62c7ca3
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Of course, human tissue completely It's unlikely that scar was composed of the same molecules. Do you think it is really appropriate to consider people to be the same entity they were seven years earlier? Because, physically, they're not. They're connected but every part has changed. Like a renovated house. It seems like after seven years you should not be liable for things you did before. Why should a man be imprisoned for a crime committe..
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Max Barry |
e3121db
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You went to school," Lee said. "I mean, at some point. And it didn't suit you very well. They wanted to teach you things you didn't care about. Dates and math and trivia about dead presidents. They didn't teach persuasion. Your ability to persuade is the single most important determinant of your quality of life, and they didn't cover that at all. Well, we do. And we're looking for students with natural aptitude."
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lexicon
persuasion
school
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Max Barry |
3a1feac
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'You can't stop me. Your word voodoo, it doesn't work on me. Right? So how do you think you're going to-' Eliot produced a pistol. He didn't seem to pull it from anywhere. He just suddenly had it. Wil's eyes stung. 'See?' Eliot put away the gun. 'There are all kinds of persuasion.'
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persuasion
weapons
word-voodoo
words
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Max Barry |
597cb7a
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'Your brain doesn't process language quite like other people. Why that is, I have no idea.' 'I have a superior brain?' 'Uh,' Eliot said, 'I wouldn't go that far.'
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language
lexicon
mind-over-matter
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Max Barry |
713b514
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She's such a bitch," Tina says, which I find a little contradictory, but overall quite true. "She's got to be in charge of everything." I sit next to her. "Well, I guess. But in business, that's leadership." Tina stares at me for a second. "I can't believe you consider that a positive trait. How about her inability to accept other points of view? Is it good leadership to be narrow, too?" "Focus," I say. "They call that focus." Tina stares a..
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business-culture
humor
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Max Barry |
fff0a3a
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With Lola, everything was solvable. She was my independent variable.
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Max Barry |
eafa998
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I will not be what I was made, but what I make.
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Max Barry |
d40e642
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Tell me what you think love is! I seriously want to know!" "Okay," Eliot said. "It's defining yourself through the eyes of another. It's coming to know a human being on a level so intimate that you lose any meaningful distinction between you, and you carry the knowledge that you are insufficient without her every day for twenty years, until she drives an animal transport at you, and you shoot her. It's that."
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Max Barry |
2ad6549
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And I, methinks, am gone astray In trackless wastes and lone.
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Max Barry |
59abfb9
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A tragedy like this, we all blame ourselves.
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Max Barry |
a8a42dd
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He strode briskly away, to do whatever it was the managers did. Have meetings, I guess. Make phone calls. It was hard for us on the technical side to understand why the company required so many managers. Engineers built things. Salespeople sold things. Even Human Resources I could understand, kind of. But managers proliferated despite performing very few identifiable functions.
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human-resources
managers
salespeople
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Max Barry |
4df6743
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The newspapers said nobody made it out alive." "Surely you didn't trust them." --
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Max Barry |
4a31f96
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I must be the latest in a long line of freshly dismembered men to fall under the spell of Lola Shanks.
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Max Barry |
d161cca
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Imagine a hundred million people clicking polls and typing in their favorite TV shows and products and political leanings, day after day. It's the biggest data profile ever. And it's voluntary. That's the funny part. People resist a census, but give them a profile page and they'll spend all day telling you who they are.
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people
social
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Max Barry |
7c0acb4
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Well, I like to know where I'm going before I try to get there. It's a mistake to try to execute a plan before you've thought of one, in my experience.
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planning
plans
thinking
travel
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Max Barry |
19ace01
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Of course the Curies died. They identified ionizing radiation while bathing in it. There were risks involved in being your own guinea pig. But there was a long tradition of scientists doing just that: of paying for the expansion of human knowledge with their lives. I didn't deserve to be categorized with them, because honestly, I wasn't interested in the greater good. I just wanted to make myself better legs. I didn't mind other people bene..
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Max Barry |
30535f3
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To succeed in sales, you need skills--not skills entirely consistent with moral integrity and emotional well-being, but skills nevertheless.
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Max Barry |
6923020
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He shook his head to clear it, but the world grew dark and angry and would not stay upright. The world did not like to be shaken. He understood that now. He wouldn't shake it again. He felt his feet sliding away from him on silent roller skates and reached for a wall for support. The wall cursed and dug its fingers into his arm, and was probably not a wall. It was probably a person.
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lexicon
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Max Barry |
8d40aaf
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Kikkhf fkattkx hfkixu zttkcu," she said."
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Max Barry |
24cfcd4
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Within perfect walls there is nothing worth protecting. There is, in fact, nothing. And so we exchange privacy for intimacy.
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loneliness
privacy
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Max Barry |
a8f0f9c
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It was funny how as soon as you knew there was something better, what you had seemed unbearable.
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Max Barry |
47ddb65
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I hadn't known this about love: that you did not need to deserve it. I thought there was a set of criteria, like a good sense of humor and looks and wealth. You could compensate deficiencies in one area with excellence in another, hence rich, ugly men with beautiful wives. But there was an algorithm involved. That was why I thought I was unloved: I didn't score highly enough. I had made some attempts to improve my score and also told myself..
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Max Barry |
5475557
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America is the greatest group of countries in the world because we have freedom. In countries like France, where the Government isn't privatized, they still have to pay tax and do whatever the Government says, which would really suck. In USA countries, we respect individual rights and let people do whatever they want.
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Max Barry |
ee6514a
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I have nothing and no one but you, and you're useless. That's not a personal commentary. It's a statement of fact.
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Max Barry |