Robin Sloan Quotes

"I can't eat pizza. If we actually end up with a pizza, it's going to be your responsibility to consume it. Do not let me have any. Even if I ask for some." He pauses. "I'll probably ask for some."

The nature of immortality is a mystery,' he says, speaking so softly that we have to lean closer to hear.' But everything I know of writing and reading tells me that this is true. I have felt it in these shelves and in others.

...this is exactly the kind of store that makes you want to buy a book about a teenage wizard. This is the kind of store that makes you want to be a teenage wizard.

He was a religious kid, and the goldsmith's trade turned him off. He spent all day melting old baubles down to make new ones - and he knew his own work was going to suffer the same fate. Everything he believed told him: This is not important. There is no gold in the city of God.

This is not an ordinary bookstore.”
“Indeed. It seems more akin to a youth hostel –

He's like a storybook spirit, a little djinn or something, except instead of air or water his element is imagination.

I’ve never listened to an audiobook before, and I have to say, it’s a totally different experience. When you read a book, the story definitely happens inside your head. When you listen, it seems to happen in a little cloud all around it, like a fuzzy knit cap pulled down over your eyes:

Sometimes, you’re stuck with a system too complicated to model completely.

You know, I'm really starting to think the whole world is just a patchwork quilt of crazy little cults, all with their own secret spaces, their own records, their own rules.

So I switch to my MacBook and make my rounds: news sites, blogs, tweets. I scroll back to find the conversations that happened without me during the day. When every single piece of media you consume is time-shifted, does that mean it’s actually you that’s time-shifted?

It’s not like we have the same brains as people a thousand years ago.”
Wait: “Yes we do.”
“We have the same hardware, but not the same software.

I'd sit at my kitchen table and start scanning help-wanted ads on my laptop, but then a browser tab would blink and I'd get distracted and follow a link to a long magazine article about genetically modified wine grapes. Too long, actually, so I'd add it to my reading list. Then I'd follow another link to a book review. I'd add the review to my reading list, too, then download the first chapter of the book — third in a series about vampire police. Then, help-wanted ads forgotten, I'd retreat to the living room, put my laptop on my belly, and read all day. I had a lot of free time.

When every single piece of media you consume is time-shifted, does that mean it's actually you that's time-shifted?

I was drunk and tired and happy. More than happy: delighted. Proud of myself — not just for making the bread, but for sharing it, and for making a few friends, even if they were all programmers and Loises. Maybe programmers and Loises are all you need.

"To tell you the truth, I hate audiobooks."
But an audiobook is like a fizzy knit cap pulled down over your -