Quotes from Ryan North

It's sad, and you're sad, but as you reflect on the three wonderful years you shared you begin to realize that relationships can be a success even if they end in a breakup. They have to, right? Otherwise every relationship you've ever had and ever will have will be a failure unless one or both of you DIES, and that's baloney. That's straight up baloney sandwiches.

Might as well ask the once-popular Magic 8-Ball something. It got "Outlook not so good" right. I don't know if anyone ever asked it about Internet Explorer. 

The machine captured that old sense of irony in death: you can know how it's going to happen, but you'll still be surprised when it does.

Before you get your hopes up, Doctor Doom's suit is both enchanted and powered by magic, and thus sadly beyond the scope of this book. It's too bad though. It's a flying suit that fires energy blasts out of its hands, and it has a cape built in.

you know: CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF HUGS IS THE ENTIRE REASON I EVER ENGAGE IN ANY NARRATIVE, FICTIONAL OR OTHERWISE??

You run through the now-open door to Capulet Castle and quickly find Juliet to deliver the good news to her. You are tired, aching, and out of breath. But on the plus side, you solved some cool puzzles and didn't get eaten by crazed animals! Juliet is overjoyed to see you and can't wait to hear your good news. She will marry her Romeo because of you. It is a happy ending, because as we know, nothing can go wrong when people get married!

In fact, Saint Maxwell's received, and often accepted, applications from preschoolers slated to die criminal deaths. It was just a question of, well, the quality of the crime. You let in the cocaine overdoses; you kept out the crack overdoses.

MY METAL ARMS ARE IMMUNE TO THE FATIGUES THAT PLAGUE MORTAL LIMBS; THOUGH I CONFESS THAT AGAINST THE ENNUI THAT PLAGUES MORTAL MINDS I FIND NO SUCH IMMUNITY" --Brain Drain

While the world may be large, complex, and hard, and unfair; it is also knowable. It can be understood. Once understood, it can be directed, controlled, and improved.

You can't just say what's going to happen ahead of time. That's not how physical law works. That's narrative. And when reality is twisted to fit narrative, that's not natural. That's someone making stories happen.

Hey, McFly!" Has Biff returned??  No!  It turns out that Howard, George's neighbour, is there!  And he wants to sell him Girl Scout cookies!

Wait... maybe the question isn't "How do I beat him?" Maybe the question in "Dude, why are we even fighting in the first place?

The movie has Marty say "blues riff in B" and then WHAM, the entire band is playing Johnny B. Goode like they've done so for years.  It's amazing, and as a kid, I spent a lot of time trying to figure this out.  How was it possible that everyone knew what notes to play and when to come in??  The backup guitar and drums both hit a beat at the beginning of the song without any communication whatsoever.

Everyone loves brunch. OBVIOUSLY, but you super-love brunch. You are so big into brunch that your middle name should be "Brunch"...

Of course. I'm the vampire, right? Just keep Matthew occupied so Nurse Feratu can do her thing.

Sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something.

But giving up's easy. You know what's hard? To believe in your own worth, to know you've got something special in you even if nobody else can see it. Even when you can't.

Scientists need to invent a way to make DNA work like in cartoons.

Wait... maybe the question isn't "How do I beat him?" Maybe the question is "Dude, why are we even fighting in the first place?

Progress! Progress through everybody dying and their kids eventually not caring who their parents hated!

As they say, 'It's all downhill from cupcakes.

Europeans—who generally like to think of themselves as being a pretty savvy lot—managed to forget and then rediscover this fact about vitamin C at least seven more times over the next five hundred years, including rediscoveries in 1593 CE, 1614 CE, 1707 CE, 1734 CE, 1747 CE, and 1794 CE, until the idea finally stuck in 1907.

Obeying an unjust law is itself unjust.

London's dramatic and hugely expensive sewer system—still in use today—was constructed for entirely the wrong reasons and only happened to improve public health by accident.