Quotes from Cory Doctorow

I fireballed him as he was seeking out treasure after we wiped out a band of orcs, playing rock-paper-scissors with each orc to determine who would prevail in combat. This is a lot more exciting than it sounds. It's quite civilized, and a little weird. You go running after someone through the woods, catch up with him, bare your teeth, and sit down to play a little roshambo.

We don't care about what you did yesterday—we care about what you're going to do tomorrow.

If you've never programmed a computer, you should. There's nothing like it in the whole world. When you program a computer, it does exactly what you tell it to do. It's like designing a machine — any machine, like a car, like a faucet, like a gas-hinge for a door — using math and instructions. It's awesome in the truest sense: it can fill you with awe.

Everyone wants a definition of creativity that makes what they do into something special and what everyone else does into nothing special. But the fact is, we're all creative. We come up with weird and interesting ideas all the time. The biggest difference between 'creators' isn't their imagination - it's how hard they work. Ideas are easy. Doing stuff is hard.

This life is real too. We're communicating aren't we?

Your problem is, you're trying to understand it. You need to just do it.

I'd never been a tall guy, and the girls I'd dated had all been my height--teenaged girls grow faster than guys, which is a cruel trick of nature.

Start at the beginning," he said. "Move one step in the direction of your goal. Remember that you can change direction to maneuver around obstacles. You don't need a plan, you need a vector.

The United States of America was a pirate nation for the first one hundred years of its existence, ripping off the patents and trademarks of the imperial European powers it had liberated itself from by blood. By keeping their GDP at home, the U.S. revolutionaries were able to bootstrap their nation into an industrial powerhouse. Now, it seems, their descendants are bent on ensuring that no other country can pull the same trick off.

We roared. We were one big animal throat, roaring.

For me -- for pretty much every writer -- the big problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity.

I want to just DO SOMETHING instead of ask someone else to start a process to investigate the possibility of someday possibly maybe doing something.

There's something really liberating about having some corner of your life that's yours, that no one gets to see except you. It's a little like nudity or taking a dump. Everyone gets naked every once in a while. Everyone has to squat on the toilet. There's nothing shameful, deviant or weird about either of them.

if it's not in my email archive, I don't know it

What's the point of a houseful of books you've already read?

The companies are multinational--why should labor still stick to borders?

Right, and you point out something important which is that people who don't want to pay, people who are pirates, don't get bothered by the DRM, they go out and buy the cracked books or download the cracked books for free. It's only people who are foolish enough to pay for them that get locked into these platforms.

For hundreds of years, the human race has dreamt of a world where knowledge could be shared universally, where every human being on the planet could have access to our storehouse of knowledge. Because knowledge is power, and shared knowledge is a superpower. Now, after centuries, we have it within our grasp to realize one of our most beautiful dreams.

I understand the world can be cruel place and there are people out there counting on naive kids like you to take advantage of. Don't just think because it's video games people can't get hurt.

It was like finding Attila the Hun at a yoga class. Like finding Darth Vader playing ultimate Frisbee in the park. Like finding Megatron volunteering at a children's hospital. Like finding Nightmare Moon having a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese.

my problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity

The best way to be superhuman is to do things that you love with other people who love them, too. The only way to do that is to admit you're doing it because you love it and if you do more than everyone, you're still only doing that because that's what you choose.

The Bill of Rights was written before data-mining, he said. He was awesomely serene, convinced of his rightness. The right to freedom of association is fine, but why shouldn't the cops be allowed to mine your social network to figure out if you're hanging out with gangbangers and terrorists?

When in problem, or in doubt, run in cirles, scream and shout