Quotes from Max Barry

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.

She put the words back in the envelope, because fuck doing that again.

You've delegated the ability to make up your mind.

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.

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.

And, hey. You. Thanks for being the kind of person who likes to pick up a book. That's a genuinely great thing. I met a librarian recently who said she doesn't read because books are her job and when she goes home, she just wants to switch off. I think we can agree that that's as creepy as hell. Thank you for seeking out stories, the kind that take place in your brain.

Roger is a powerful, confident, good-looking man kept awake at nights by the heart-gripping fear that other people don't think he is powerful, confident, and good-looking.

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.

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.

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.

These emotional cues were distracting. I was used to arguing with scientists who would explain with perfectly bland faces why you were wrong and stupid.

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.

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.

Within perfect walls there is nothing worth protecting. There is, in fact, nothing. And so we exchange privacy for intimacy.

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.

Over time, there would be less and less of him and more of the tumor. His brain was being eaten by God. He left the clinic in fine spirits. He had no intention of removing the tumor. It was the perfect solution to his dilemma: how to feed his body's desire for intimacy. He was delusional, of course. There was no higher presence filling him with love, connecting him to all things. It only felt that way. But that was fine. That was ideal. He would not have trusted a God outside his head.

With Lola, everything was solvable. She was my independent variable.

Librarians are amazing like that. They will hand you a book they know will make your eyes bug out because they know that is the point of novels, not to satisfy but to surprise.

Persuasion stems from understanding. We compel others by learning who they are and turning it against them.

I will not be what I was made, but what I make.

You begin a marriage with such high ideals, thinking everything should be perfect. When it's not, you throw your toys out of the crib. But then you're living in an empty apartment with kids who don't call. It was better with the toys

Elizabeth puts her hands on her hips. Elizabeth has shoulder-length brown hair that looks as if it has been cut with a straight razor and a mouth that could have done the cutting. Elizabeth is smart, ruthless, and emotionally damaged; that is, she is a sales representative. If Elizabeth's brain was a person, it would have scars, tattoos, and be missing one eye. 'Do you want to ask me a question, Roger? Do you want to ask if I took your donut?

I don't know how anyone can appreciate devotion that slavish. It's not objective. I have a similar issue with religion.

And I, methinks, am gone astray In trackless wastes and lone.