Max Barry Quotes

“Art and marketing can’t coexist,” Tina says. “It’s either one or the other.”
“Not this again,” 6 says from the sofa.
Tina ignores her. “I made the film for you with the intention of appealing to a bunch of corporate suits. That I used artistic techniques to do it is irrelevant.”
“Just because it’s aimed at a particular market means it’s not art?” I say.
Tina nods once. “Exactly.”
I frown. “What if I take a work of art and market it? It’s still art, right?”
“You can’t take artwork and just tweak it to be more commercially appealing.” She sips at her beer. “Not without destroying its artistic merit.”
“Tina, this is so crap,” 6 says, standing up. “If I showed you a painting but didn’t tell you whether it was created by a starving artist or an agency commissioned to produce it, you couldn’t tell me whether it was art or not.”
“Oh, I think I’d be able to tell,” Tina says.
6 shifts impatiently. “Who cares what the intent was? It’s the result that matters.”
“The intent is not divorceable from the result,” Tina says. “I know you people don’t want to face that, but it’s true.”
“You don’t want to face the fact that marketing is the greatest producer of art on the planet. There’s packaging, copy, TV advertising—can you tell me why that’s not art?”
“If you can’t make that distinction yourself, I won’t be able to explain it to you.”
“Oh, right,” 6 says, “you think some hack’s poems that no one ever reads are more important than movie half the world sees? A lot more people have seen a Coke can than a van Gogh.”
“I’ve noticed you corporate people do this,” Tina says. “Confuse popularity with quality.”
“It’s a democratic society, Tina,” 6 says. “Your opinion of what’s quality is no more valid than mine. Popularity is quality. And so marketers are today’s real artists.”
“Drink, anyone?” I say.

John said, "You know what makes a successful executive?"

When someone thinks, “I liked his last book, I’ll hope this new one is good” and shells out their hard-earned, I fervently want that person to be thrilled.

Someone from the Internet Writing Workshop sent me a link to the Gender Genie, where you paste in a section of text and it uses an algorithm to detect whether the author is male or female. Or, if you’re an author, you can tell whether you’re really nailing your opposite-sex characters. I mean, nailing their dialog.

The compound was like a mutant Boy Scout camp: all green tents and vehicles and barrels, smack in the middle of nowhere. He saw a troop of soldiers drilling in a field. They reminded him of high school football players with guns. Then a tank rolled past.
“Shit! What’s that?”
“That is an Abrams M1A battle tank, sir!”
Billy looked around with new respect. Now he understood why the NRA membership fees were so high.

“It’s all responsibility and no control,” 6 says. “The classic path to failure.”

There’s no requirement that jobs be meaningful, Jones. If there was, half the country would be unemployed.

Elizabeth is smart, ruthless, and emotionally damaged; that is, she is a sales representative.

How she became manager remains a mystery. But there are only two possibilities. One is that Senior Management mistook her tirades for drive and a commitment to excellence. The other is that they knew Sydney was a paranoid psychopath, and that’s exactly the kind of person they want in management.

“Reversing gender stereotypes doesn’t eliminate them,” 6 says, tossing the bacon. “You just create a whole new set of prejudices.”

The atmosphere of desperate, ignorant terror essential to healthy rumors seeps away, replaced by a silent, wary paranoia. People bunker down, jealously keeping what they know, which is nothing, to themselves.

“We’ll refer the incident to the Government, and they will—”
“The Government? The enemy kicks you in the balls and you want to fill out a complaint form? You think the Government’s even on our side?”

She dabs at her eyes. “Jesus, you nearly killed me.” She takes a deep breath. “Whoo. Okay. Tell me how you justify buying a new pair of shoes.”
“What?”
“When there are starving people in Africa, what kind of person spends two hundred bucks on shoes? See, once you buy into that paradigm, it’s a bottomless pit. You can never feel good about yourself while there’s anybody in the world poor or hungry, which there always is, Jones, and has been since the dawn of time, so you feel guilty and hypocritical all the time. I’m consistent. I admit I don’t care. You want me to reassure you that Alpha is ethical, but I’m not going to do it, because ethics is bullshit. It’s the spin we put on our lives to justify what we do. I say, be big enough to live without rationalizations.”

When it's done with being graceful and poetic, language is meant to communicate, after all.

I’m very interested in what sort of car she’s driving because I think it will reveal some insight into her personality. After all, I don’t have a car at all, and that reveals plenty about me.