John Barnes Quotes

Finally she resorts to the oldest tactic of all, telling the truth.

Don’t get mad, and don’t waste time getting even.
Get ahead.

Human beings always say they prefer peace, but it takes a saint to talk us into not assaulting our neighbors.

Writing about yourself is addictive. I hope all you kids noticed that. If you feel like autobiography, try heroin. Lots safer and easier to control…

When all else fails, admit you’re an idiot.

And just like this, all of a sudden, your people and mine will begin to talk?" "It only looks sudden from some places. Running off a cliff is sudden if you don't know it's there, even if you have been running toward it for days." "That's not a reassuring metaphor." "It isn't meant to be.

I never get into arguments between people of opposite gender," he said. "Part of why I'm still healthy and vigorous at my age.

Experimentally she thinks about dumping toxic waste in pristine wilderness and killing the last great apes on earth with a club. She still finds both those thoughts disgusting. This is a relief; it seems to her that she’s just selfish, not evil.
She was always taught they’re the same thing. She hopes she remembers, when she gets out of all this, that they’re not.

Jesse, news for the masses, whether it's XV or all the way back to the old newspapers, is entertainment. People don't follow the news to stay informed, no matter what they tell you in school, they watch or experience to be entertained. If it were like they teach in school, they'd put the congressional budget, scientific research, and bios of every important bureaucrat in the opening slot, and they'd do special editions for the Nobel Prizes and the World Health Organization's annual report. That's not what it's about. They cover crime, sports, famous people having sex, funny animal stories, what it's like to stay in an expensive hotel in a resort area. Because that's what's interesting and fun and entertaining.
"It wouldn't matter so much except that people's lives are so dull they believe their entertainment—and for a hundred years we've been telling them that the world is very dangerous, that there are violent thugs everywhere, war is constantly imminent, sex is their most important need, all that crap.
"Well shit, Jesse, if you were a shrink and you had a patient who only wanted to talk about violence, extravagance, cruelty, and his sexual fantasies—what would you suggest? More of the same?"
Jesse's a bit startled, but he asks, "Whatever happened to freedom of the press?"
She snorts, a funny, ugly noise. Then she says, "Sorry, Jesse, but what does that have to do with the present day? You think the broadcast nets are like Ben Franklin, turning out little pamphlets for a few to read and most to ignore? Look, a few huge private corporations are making all their money by spreading fear, hate, depression, and an exploitive attitude. Justice would demand public hangings."

Other people say that their parents are the same way whenever there’s bad news from whatever patch of dirt they came from, but being common still doesn’t mean it makes any sense. After all, it was twenty years ago, and if the adults were going to get so upset about having everything smashed up, they shouldn’t have had a war or tolerated AIDS for so long that they gave it the chance to turn into mutAIDS, or allowed the climate disequilibration to get so far out of hand. Honestly, they remind me of the three-year-olds in the nursery, smashing things to bits and then crying because they’re broken. I certainly hope I’m not that kind of a moron when I’m that old.

The only thing Carla has ever learned to like about dealing with power is how easy it is to embarrass people who have it.

Mother had been talking in that bizarre way a lot lately; it sounded like the Olsen novels, “back when men were full of manliness, fields were full of soybeans, small towns were full of hicks, and life was full of deeply significant aching empty meaningless existential nothingness,” as Tom liked to put it.

The more rules you impose on a creative intelligence, of course, the fewer problems it can solve.

Brains don’t exactly run in that family—they sort of dribble slowly away.

With diligent effort he has established that there is no statistical basis for Murphy’s Law. He has also established that he believes in it anyway.