19 quotes
Nobody can overthrow the fascist dictator by being nicer than him. The reason for this is: by definition everybody is always already nicer than the fascist dictator.
Jack Glass (2012)
The motives that explained human murder bunched, historically, into three groups: material gain; personal grudge and sociopathy.
Jack Glass (2012)
One of the curiosities of anger, of course, is that the more you focus it outward, firing it at the injustices of the world, the more it actually parses your own self-pity and resentment.
Jack Glass (2012)
Death is the currency of power.
Jack Glass (2012)
By all means let us consult your needs! So long as they overlap precisely with my needs, I’m sure we can accommodate them.
Jack Glass (2012)
Jack considered: there were worse things that could happen than him dying. Of course, there were much better things, too.
Jack Glass (2012)
“You’re just doing that to pass the time,” said Davide, dismissively.
“Just to pass the time,” agreed Jac. “Though I suppose time will pass, in any case, regardless of what I do.”
Jack Glass (2012)
“Do you know what this is?
“The floor, Miss?”
“Dust! I read about it—tiny particles of matter.”
Jack Glass (2012)
She didn’t have to believe the technology existed. She only had to believe that people believed the technology existed. People, being stupid, believed all sorts of things.
Jack Glass (2012)
Diana got that seventh-sense intimation that she had touched on an unmentionable matter; although a strangely involuted one whereby the fact that it was unmentionable was itself unmentionable.
Jack Glass (2012)
What’s inside the box?
Doubt is there.
What’s another name for doubt?
Death is another name for doubt. Death is what inflects the immortal certainty of the universe’s process with uncertainty.
Jack Glass (2012)
People-problems did not interest her. Data seemed to her a larger, purer, more transcendent quantity than Homo sapiensness. Human-to-human interactions were, effectively, all just politics, and politics bored her.
Jack Glass (2012)
But once we are free...once we have evolved beyond the old medieval power structures and the medieval internecine violence they create, then we’ll be able to use the technology responsibly. Everything depends on that.
Jack Glass (2012)
It had to be one or the other. Did it have to be one or the other? Even the question as to whether it had to be one or the other had to be one or the other!
Jack Glass (2012)
So it ends
As it begins.
Off we climb
And no one wins.
Jack Glass (2012)
That a human being had died did not distress her. Had it been somebody she knew it would have upset her; she wasn’t a monster. Had it been somebody she cared about. But it was nobody she knew, and it would have been disingenuous to pretend that the death of somebody she didn’t know affected her on an emotional level.
Jack Glass (2012)
Individually speaking, death is always a rupture, a violence. But taking a total view, death is the bell curve upon which the cosmos is balanced. Without it, nothing would work, everything would collapse, clogged and stagnant. Death is flow. It is the necessary lubrication of universal motion. It is, in itself, neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy.
Jack Glass (2012)
His last hours alive. But he didn’t know!
None of us will know, of course. The weird grammar of death. You die, he or she dies, they die, but there is no genuine form for “I”. Not really. All know that, none know when.
Jack Glass (2012)
It could be any one of a dozen things. Experience has taught me that we much more often see connection where there is only random copresence. Pattern-seeking consciousness, you know. Great plains ape, you know.
Jack Glass (2012)