+I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended
+up where I needed to be.
+ -- Douglas Adams _The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul_
+%
+Mozart tells us what it's like to be human, Beethoven tells us what
+it's like to be Beethoven, and Bach tells us what it's like to be the
+universe.
+ -- Douglas Adams
+%
+PowerPoint is symptomatic of a certain type of bureaucratic
+environment: one typified by interminable presentations with lots of
+fussy little bullet-points and flashy dissolves and soundtracks masked
+into the background, to try to convince the audience that the goon
+behind the computer has something significant to say.
+ -- Charles Stross _The Jennifer Morgue_ p33
+%
+This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic
+ -- Terry Pratchett
+%
+Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or
+daring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But
+the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer
+to achieve immortality by not dying.
+ -- Terry Pratchet _The Color of Magic_
+%
+Only one creature could have duplicated the expressions on their
+faces, and that would be a pigeon who has heard not only that Lord
+Nelson has got down off his column but has also been seen buying a
+12-bore repeater and a box of cartridges.
+ -- Terry Pratchet _Mort_
+%
+He no longer wished to be dead. At the same time, it cannot be said
+that he was glad to be alive. But at least he did not resent it. He
+was alive, and the stubbornness of this fact had little by little
+begun to fascinate him -- as if he had managed to outlive himself, as
+if he were somehow living a posthumous life.
+ -- Paul Auster _City of Glass_
+%
+I really wanted to talk to her.
+I just couldn't find an algorithm that fit.
+ -- Peter Watts _Blindsight_ p294
+%
+Everyone has to die. And in a hundred years nobody's going to inquire
+just how most people died. The best thing is to do it in the way that
+strikes your fancy most.
+ -- Kenzaburō Ōe _Silent Cry_ p5
+%
+I learned really early the difference between knowing the name of
+something and knowing something
+ -- Richard Feynman "What is Science" Phys. Teach. 7(6) 1969
+%
+Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle
+is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to
+fool.
+ -- Richard Feynman "What is and What Should be the Role of Scientific
+ Culture in Modern Society"; 1964
+%
+To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an
+authority myself
+ -- Albert Einstein
+%
+The computer allows you to make mistakes faster than any other
+invention, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila
+ -- Mitch Ratcliffe
+%
+Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that
+you do it.
+ -- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
+%
+You could say to the Universe this is not /fair/. And the Universe
+would say: Oh it isn't? Sorry.
+ -- Terry Pratchett _Soul Music_ p357
+%
+G: If we do happen to step on a mine, Sir, what do we do?
+EB: Normal procedure, Lieutenant, is to jump 200 feet in the air and
+scatter oneself over a wide area.
+ -- Somewhere in No Man's Land, BA4
+%
+Love is... a complex sequence of neurochemical reactions that makes
+people behave like idiots. It's similar to intoxication, but the
+hangover's even worse.
+ -- J. Jacques _Questionable Content_ #1039
+ http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1039
+%
+Who is thinking this?
+I am.
+ -- Greg Egan _Diaspora_ p38
+%
+I have no use for "before and after" pictures.
+I can't remember starting, and I'm never done.
+ -- a softer world #221
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=221
+%
+Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue
+to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your
+flowcharts; they'll be obvious.
+ -- Fredrick P. Brooks Jr., The Mythical Man Month
+%
+Religion is religion, however you wrap it, and like Quell says, a
+preoccupation with the next world clearly signals an inability to cope
+credibly with this one.
+ -- Richard K. Morgan "Broken Angels" p65
+%
+After the first battle of Sto Lat, I formulated a policy which has
+stood me in good stead in other battles. It is this: if an enemy has
+an impregnable stronghold, see he stays there.
+ -- Terry Pratchett _Jingo_ p265
+%
+Vimes hated and despised the privileges of rank, but they had this to
+be said for them: At least they meant that you could hate and despise
+them in comfort.
+ -- Terry Pratchett _The Fifth Elephant_ p111
+%
+J.W. Grant: "Bastard!"
+Rico: "Yes, Sir. In my case, an accident of birth. But you, Sir,
+you're a self-made man."
+ -- Henry "Rico" Fardan in "The Professionals"
+%
+"You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in
+a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die from
+asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my
+mother told me when I was young."
+"Why, what did she tell you?"
+"I don't know, I didn't listen."
+ –- Douglas Adams _The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy_
+%
+a friend will help you move
+a best friend will help you move bodies
+but if you have to move your best friend's body
+you're on your own
+ -- a softer world #242
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=242
+%
+It was a very familiar voice. [...] It was a voice you could have used
+to open a bottle of whine.
+ -- Terry Pratchett _The Last Continent_ p270
+%
+The carbon footprint of a single human being is enormous.
+If you think about it, your honour,
+I'm an environmentalist.
+ -- a softer world #283
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=283
+%
+We must realize that today's Establishment is the New George III.
+Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If
+it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution.
+ -- William O. Douglas _Points of Rebellion_
+%
+"Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak
+up for them as have no voices."
+ -- Grandma Aching in _The Wee Free Men_ by Terry Pratchett p227
+%
+But if, after all, we are on the wrong track, what then? Only
+disappointed human hopes, nothing more. And even if we perish, what
+will it matter in the endless cycles of eternity?
+ -- Fridtjof Nansen _Farthest North_ p152
+%
+There is no more concentrated form of evil
+than apathy.
+%
+I will not make any deals with you. I've resigned. I will not be
+pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My
+life is my own. I resign.
+ -- Patrick McGoohan as Number 6 in "The Prisoner"
+%
+Where am I? THE VILLAGE. What do you want? INFORMATION. Which side are
+you on? THAT WOULD BE TELLING. WE WANT INFORMATION. INFORMATION.
+INFORMATION. You won't get it! BY HOOK OR BY CROOK, WE WILL. Who are
+you? THE NEW NUMBER 2. Who is Number 1? YOU ARE NUMBER 6. I am not a
+number! I am a free man! HAHAHAHAHAHA.
+ -- Patrick McGoohan as Number 6 with Number 2 in "The Prisoner"
+%
+Let us chat together a moment, my friend. There are still several
+hours until dawn, and I have the whole day to sleep.
+ -- Count Orlock in _Nosferatu (1922)_
+%
+Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far
+as society is free to use the results.
+ -- Richard M Stallman _GNU Manifesto_
+%
+"She decided what she wished to happen and then assumed that reality
+would bend to her wishes." [...] "Reality doesn't indulge wishes."
+ -- Terry Goodkind _Phantom_ p133
+%
+Judge if you want.
+We are all going to die.
+I intend to deserve it.
+ -- a softer world #421
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=421
+%
+All my dreams came true.
+I just didn't think them through.
+ -- a softer world #388
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=388
+%
+You think to yourself, hey, it's a test tube, for God's sake. Pretty
+soon, though, the rush from a test tube isn't enough. You want to
+experiment more and more. Then before you know it, you're laying in
+the corner of a lab somewhere with a Soxhlet apparatus in one hand,
+a three neck flask in the other, strung out and begging for grant
+money.
+ -- Tim Mitchell, 1994 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize Speech
+%
+The smallest quantity of bread that can be sliced and toasted has yet
+to be experimentally determined. In the quantum limit we must
+necessarily encounter fundamental toast particles which the author
+will unflinchingly designate here as "croutons".
+ -- Cser, Jim. Nanotechnology and the Physical Limits of Toastability.
+ AIR 1:3, June, 1995.
+%
+[The] JK-88 [coffee] percolator is capable of achieving the ultimate
+balance of aroma and density, aftertaste and emollience, pentosans and
+tannins. The next step is to reduce the cost of the HPLC-E technology
+to the point where it can be manufactured for less than the cost of a
+Boeing 757.
+ -- Charles Stross "Extracts from the Club Diary" in _Toast_ p83-4
+%
+Something the junk advertisers don't seem to understand: we live in an
+information super-saturated world. If I don't want to buy something,
+no amount of shouting or propagandizing will budge me; all it will do
+is get me annoyed. On the other hand, if I have a need for your
+product, I can seek it out in an eyeblink.
+ -- Charles Stross "Toast: A Con Report" in _Toast_ p136
+%
+[On a trip back from collecting grass seeds in tropical bird stomachs
+and being thought by the customs agents to be transporting Marijuana.]
+"Anyone so square as to tell you they are transporting grass seeds is
+bound to be OK"
+ -- Peter K. Klopfer _Seeds of Doubt_ Science 134:177 10 April 2009
+%
+"What, now?"
+"Soon equates to good, later to worse, Uagen Zlepe, scholar.
+Therefore, immediacy."
+ -- Iain M. Banks _Look to Windward_ p 213
+%
+He quite enjoyed the time by himself in the mornings. The day was too
+early to have started going really wrong.
+ -- Terry Pratchet _Only You Can Save Mankind_ p133
+%
+Let me bring you up to speed:
+We know nothing.
+You are now up to speed.
+ -- Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau in _The Pink Panther 2_ (2009)
+%
+A kiss was mysterious and powerful, fragile and invincible. Like any
+spark, a kiss might fizzle into nothing or consume an entire forest.
+[...] A kiss could change the entire world.
+ -- Scott Westerfeld _The Killing of Worlds_ p336
+%
+Rule 6: "If violence wasn't your last resort, you failed to resort to
+enough of it."
+ -- Howard Tayler _Schlock Mercenary_ March 13th, 2005
+ http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20050313.html
+%
+Rule 30: "A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the
+further you'll go."
+ -- Howard Tayler _Schlock Mercenary_ March 8th, 2003
+ http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20030308.html
+%
+There is no form of lead-poisoning which more rapidly and thoroughly
+pervades the blood and bones and marrow than that which reaches the
+young author through mental contact with type metal.
+ -- Oliver Wendell Holmes (Tilton 1947 p67)
+%
+It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
+ -- Frederick Douglass
+%
+"That is why I am still tyrant of [Ankh-Morpork]. The way to retain
+power, I have always thought, is to ensure the absolute unthinkability
+of oneself not being there."
+ -- Terry Pratchett _Unseen Academicals_ p391
+%
+listen, what you do in the privacy
+of your neighbour's house while they're away
+is your own business
+ -- a softer world #511
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=511
+%
+Sometimes I wish I could take back all my mistakes
+but then I think
+what if my mother could take back hers?
+ -- a softer world #498
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=498
+%
+Clean living is less fun
+and you wind up feeling stupid
+when you still die.
+ -- a softer world #489
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=489
+%
+If god is always watching over us
+who's driving?
+ -- a softer world #487
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=487
+%
+Maybe I did steal your heart
+and I am such a perfect criminal
+that you never noticed
+ -- a softer world #481
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=481
+%
+Life would be way easier
+if I were easier.
+ -- a softer world #473
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=473
+%
+I always thought
+violence didn't solve anything
+until one day it did.
+ -- a softer world #470
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=470
+%
+With one simple pill
+we cured unhappiness
+and art
+ -- a softer world #437
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=437
+%
+First you take a drink,
+then the drink takes a drink,
+then the drink takes you.
+ -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
+%
+It can sometimes happen that a scholar, his task completed, discovers
+that he has no one to thank. Never mind. He will invent some debts.
+Research without indebtedness is suspect, and somebody must always,
+somehow, be thanked.
+ -- Umberto Eco "How to Write an Introduction"
+%
+Let the victors, when they come,
+When the forts of folly fall
+Find thy body by the wall!
+ -- Matthew Arnold
+%
+unbeingdead isn't beingalive
+ -- e.e. cummings "31" _73 Poems_
+%
+nothing except the impossible shall occur
+ -- e.e. cummings "XLII" _1 x 1_
+%
+-tommorow is our permanent address
+and there they'll scarcely find us(if they do,
+we'll move away still further:into now
+ -- e.e. cummings "XXXIX" _1 x 1_
+%
+in Just-
+spring when the world is mud-
+luscious the little lame baloonman
+
+whistles far and wee
+ -- e.e. cummings "[in Just-]"
+%
+life's not a paragraph
+And death i think is no parenthesis
+ -- e.e. cummings "Four VII" _is 5_
+%
+Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.
+We get very little wisdom from success, you know.
+ -- William Saroyan _My Heart's in the Highlands_
+%
+Given that the odds of a miracle are one in one million, and events
+which could be a miracle happen every second, the odds of not seeing a
+miracle in a month are less than 8 in 100. Clearly miracles are not
+all that miraculous.
+%
+They say when you embark on a journey
+of revenge
+dig two graves.
+They underestimate me.
+ -- a softer world #560
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=560
+%
+I never meant to let you down.
+I thought for sure
+the attic lock would hold.
+ -- a softer world #562
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=562
+%
+I made a bunch of stickers
+to put on rooftops, and in secret tunnels.
+"If you are reading this,
+ then you are awesome"
+ -- a softer world #569
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=569
+%
+I'm sorry about those late night emails.
+I only said those things because I was too drunk
+to be afraid.
+ -- a softer world #579
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=579
+%
+6: If we are one, then we can defeat 2.
+ -- "The Prisoner (2009 Miniseries)" _Schizoid_
+%
+2: There is no out. There is only in.
+ -- "The Prisoner (2009 Miniseries)"
+%
+6: I'm human. I have a thousand flaws. I break down. I get up or I
+don't get up. I get lost. I make the same mistakes over and over. I
+have scars and wounds. Sometimes when I can't bear them anymore, I
+drink. You can't fix me. You can't fix any of us. You can't make us
+perfect.
+ -- "The Prisoner (2009 Miniseries)" _Checkmate_
+%
+We want 6. 6 is the 1.
+ -- "The Prisoner (2009 Miniseries)" _Checkmate_
+%
+I've had so much good luck recently I was getting sated with it. It's
+like sugar, good luck. At first it's very sweet, but after a while you
+start to think: any more of this and I shall be sick.
+ -- Adam Roberts _Yellow Blue Tibia_ p301
+%
+I cannot find rest
+Because I am powerless
+To amend a broken world.
+ -- Guy Gavriel Kay _Under Heaven_ p295
+%
+What prison taught me was that some people are born into a life where
+they're going to be subjected to intense life experiences and personal
+tragedy on an almost daily basis. [...] I don't think you get
+enlightenment after something like that. I think all anyone really
+wants, if they're honest with themselves, is a quiet, easy life
+surrounded by people that love them. Anything else is a conceit.
+ -- OP from 99chan
+%
+Overcast nights are beautiful; the sun, mostly set, a near full moon
+partially risen, light pollution from the city, and the sky delicately
+purpleorangegray, as if it were a livid bruise.
+%
+The terrorist's job is to terrorize the people, to interfere with
+freedom in such a way that disrupts ordinary life and commerce. With
+due respect, it is clear that the above referenced governmental
+agencies are aiding the terrorists' objective.
+ -- Gary Fielder in Gary Fielder vs Janet Napolitano et al.
+%
+[C]haos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought.
+It always defeats order, because it is better organized.
+ -- Terry Pratchett _Interesting Times_ p4
+%
+Your absence has gone through me
+Like thread through a needle.
+Everything I do is stitched with its color.
+ -- W. S. Merwin "Poetry in Motion" p107
+%
+Logs drowse in the pond
+Dreaming of their heroes
+Alligator and crocodile
+ -- Vern Rutsala "Poetry in Motion" p77
+%
+Once, our bodies were bells:
+Simply moving in the wind
+We tolled our names.
+ -- Phillis Levin "Poetry in Motion" p55
+%
+It's brief and bright, dear children; bright and brief.
+Delight's the lightning; the long thunder's grief.
+ -- John Frederick Nims "Poetry in Motion" p31
+%
+I would like to be the air
+that inhabits you for a moment
+only. I would like to be that unnoticed
+& that necessary.
+ -- Margaret Atwood "Poetry in Motion" p140
+%
+I stared at the mountain rising over me. Empty. It was a pointless
+thing to have done -- climb up it, across it, and down it. Stupid! It
+looked perfect; so clean and untouched, and we had changed nothing.
+[...] I had been on it too long, and it had taken everything.
+ -- Joe Simpson "Touching the Void" p117
+%
+Have you ever noticed: the most vocal superpatriots are the old men
+who send young men out to die.
+ -- Harlan Ellison "Basilisk" (_Deathbird Stories_ p73)
+%
+"Do you think you might be suffering from post-traumatic stress
+disorder?" [...]
+"Who isn't?"
+ -- Walter Jon Williams _This Is Not A Game_ p121
+%
+I finally developed
+a computer with feelings.
+It just doesn't have
+feelings for me.
+ -- a softer world #633
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=633
+%
+Live and learn
+or die and teach by example
+ -- a softer world #625
+ http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=625
+%
+I'm So Meta, Even This Acronym
+-- xkcd http://xkcd.com/917/
+%
+[I]t's true that some of the most terrible things in the world are
+done by people who think, genuinely think, that they're doing it for
+the best, especially if there is some god involved.
+ -- Terry Pratchett _Snuff_ p185
+%
+"I always tend to assume there's an infinite amount of money out
+there." "There might as well be, [...] but most of it gets spent on
+pornography, sugar water, and bombs. There is only so much that can be
+scraped together for particle accelerators."
+ -- Neal Stephenson _Anathem_ p262
+%
+"Do you need [...] [t]ools? Stuff?"
+"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. [...] We
+have a protractor."
+ -- Neal Stephenson _Anathem_ p320
+%
+The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and
+Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making
+mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes
+from being corrected.
+ -- G. K. Chesterton "Illustrated London News (1924-04-19)"
+%
+You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost
+anything without losing your temper or self-confidence.
+ -- Robert Frost
+%
+Le temps est un grand maître, dit-on; le malheur est qu'il soit un
+maître inhumain qui tue ses élèves.
+Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
+ -- Hector Berlioz
+%
+That's the wonderful thing about crayons. They can take you to more
+places than a starship.
+ -- Guinan "Star Trek: The Next Generation: Rascals (#6.7)"
+%
+He wore trifocals. There was stratigraphy even in his glasses.
+ -- John McPhee _Annals of the Former World_ p364
+%
+"Old hypotheses never really die, they're like dormant volcanoes."
+ -- John McPhee _Annals of the Former World_ p313
+%
+"While geologists argue, the rocks just sit there and sometimes they
+seem to smile"
+ -- John McPhee _Annals of the Former World_ p304
+%
+"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is
+a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress."
+ -- John Adams