I would rather do a dangerous job than a job that makes me comatose with boredom. - Emily St. John Mandel

This whole place is death. No, that’s unfair—this place isn’t death, this place is indifference. This place is utterly neutral on the question of whether he lives or dies; it doesn’t care about his last name or where he went to school; it hasn’t even noticed him.

Sometimes you don’t know you’re going to throw a grenade until you’ve already pulled the pin.

Twenty-third Street wasn’t busy—a little early for the lunch crowd—but he kept getting trapped behind iPhone zombies, people half his age who wandered in a dream with their eyes fixed on their screens.