"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck."
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"There are times when friendship feels like running down a hill together as fast as you can, jumping over things, spinning around, and you don't care where you're going, and you don't care where you've come from, because all that matters is speed, and the hands holding your hands."
— M.T. Anderson (Whales on Stilts)

"We Americans are interested only in the consumption of our products. We have no interest in how they are produced, or what happens to them once we discard them, once we throw them away."
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"Empedocles claims that in utero, our backbone is one long solid; and that through the constriction of the womb and the punishments of birth it must be snapped again and again to form our vertebrae; that for the child to have a spine, his back must first be broken."
— M.T. Anderson

""The natural world is so adaptable...So adaptable you wonder what's natural.""
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"At long last, you may no longer distinguish what binds you from what is you."
— M.T. Anderson (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party)

"People talk about the beauty of the spring, but I can't see it. The trees are brown and bare, slimy with rain. Some are crawling with new purple hairs. And the buds are bulging like tumorous acne, and I can tell that something wet, and soft, and cold, and misshapen is about to be born.

And I am turning into a vampire."
— M.T. Anderson (Thirsty)

" We enter a time of calamity. Blood on the tarmac. Fingers in the juicer. Towers of air frozen in the lunar wastes. Models dead on the runways, with their legs facing backward. Children with smiles that can’t be undone. Chicken shall rot in the aisles. See the pillars fall."
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"Whispering makes a narrow place narrower."
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"I protested, 'A man is known by his deeds.'

'Oh, that's sure,' said Bono. 'Just like a house is known by its deeds. The deeds say who owns it, who sold it, and who'll be buying a new one when it gets knocked down.'"
— M.T. Anderson

"I miss that time. The cities back then, just after the forests died, were full of wonders, and you'd stumble on them--these princes of the air on common rooftops--the rivers that burst through the city streets so they ran like canals--the rabbits in parking garages--the deer foaling, nestled in Dumpsters like a Nativity."
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"Lily told her about what had happened so far. (If you're interested, you can go back to the beginning of the book and read all the way through to this point again.)"
— M.T. Anderson (Whales on Stilts)

"We must curb ourfury, and allow sadness to diminish, and speak our stories with coolness and deliberation.
"
— M.T. Anderson (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party)

"...they told me of color, that it was an illusion of the eye, an event in the perceiver's mind, not in the object; they told me that color had no reality; indeed, they told me that color did not inhere in a physical body any more than pain was in a needle.

And then they imprisoned me in darkness; and though there was no color there, I still was black, and they still were white; and for that, they bound and gagged me."
— M.T. Anderson (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party)

"Then it was this big thing. She was like, 'I never want to see you again', and I was like, 'Fine. Okay? Fine. Then get some special goggles.'"
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"Then it was this big thing. She was like, 'I never want to see you again', and I was like, 'Fine. Okay? Fine. Then get some special goggles.'"
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"Image of a girl holding a blaster to a twin’s temple. “Remember, bi***. You can’t spell ‘danger’ without DNA.”


Blam.
"
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"...for reading, once begun, quickly becomes home and circle and court and family, and indeed, without narrative, I felt exiled from my own country. By the transport of books, that which is most foreign becomes one's familiar walks and avenues; while that which is most familiar is removed to delightful strangeness; and unmoving, one travels infinite causeways, immobile and thus unfettered."
— M.T. Anderson (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party)

"“…It’s like a spiral: They keep making everything more basic so it will appeal to everyone. And gradually, everyone gets used to everything being basic, so we get less and less varied as people, more simple. So the corps make everything even simpler. And it goes on and on.”"
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"…what the President meant in the intercepted chat. This was, uh, nothing but a routine translation problem. It has to be understood, that…It has to be understood that when the President referred to the Prime Minister of the Global Alliance as a ‘big sh*thead,’ what he was trying to convey was, uh—this is an American idiom used to praise people, by referring to the sheer fertilizing power of their thoughts. The President meant to say that the Prime Minister’s head was fertile, just full of these nutrients where ideas can grow. It really was a compliment…"
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"It’s the end. It’s the end of the civilization. We’re going down.


No, it’s sure not too attractive. Lenticels.


I just hope my kids don’t live to see the last days. The things burning and people living in cellars.


Violet.


The only thing worse than the thought it may all come tumbling down is the thought that we may go on like this forever.
"
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"Perhaps his gloom was due to his profession, that he lived among fallen empires, and in reading these languages that had not been spoken by the common man in centuries, he had all about him the ruin of language, evidence of toppled suburbs, grass growing among the mosaics, and voices that had been choked with poison, iron, age, or ash."
— M.T. Anderson (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party)

"I do not know what I regret. I sit with my pen, and cannot find an end to that sentence."
— M.T. Anderson (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party)

"'We ain't anything more than a name and some likes and some distastes, and a story we tell about ourselves.'
'And what others say about us.'"
— M.T. Anderson (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves)

"I wanted to say something to cheer her up. I had a feeling that cheering her up might be a lot of work. I was thinking of how sometimes, trying to say the right thing to people, it’s like some kind of brain surgery, and you have to tweak exactly the right part of the lobe. Except with talking, it’s more like brain surgery with old, rusted skewers and things, maybe like those things you use to eat lobster, but brown. And you have to get exactly the right place, and you’re touching around in the brain but the patient, she keeps jumping and saying, “Ow.” "
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"I don’t know. D’you think? He’s pretty wide in the chest.”

The girl looked at me, and I was frozen. So I said, “Yeah. I work out.”
Violet asked me, “What are you? What’s your cup size?”
I shrugged and played along. “Like, nine and a half?” I guessed. “That’s my shoe size.”
Violet said, “I think he’d like something slinky, kind of silky.”
I said, “As long as you can stop me from rubbing myself up against a wall the whole time.”
“Okay,” said Violet, holding her hands up like she was annoyed. “Okay, the chemise last week was a mistake.
"
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"So one time I said to her that she should stop reading it, because it was just depressing, so she was like, But I want to know what’s going on, so I was like, Then you should do something about it. It’s a free country. You should do something. She was like, Nothing’s ever going to happen in a two-party system. She was like, da da da, nothing’s ever going to change, both parties are in the pocket of big business, da da da, all that? So I was like, </i>You got to believe in the people, it’s a democracy, we can change things.</i>
She was like, It’s not a democracy."
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"The tumults of time are oft passed by in records of the private memoirist; for our days consist not of the Senatorial speech and the refracted solar beam cast through heroic cloud, but rather of bread eaten, and ink blotted, and talk of the sermon, and walks along the whiskery avenues in the garden."
— M.T. Anderson

"‘Hold on to your hats, ladies!’ cried Jasper Dash. ‘You’re in for a wild ride! This futuristic buggy can attain speeds of up to thirty-five miles per hour!’"
— M.T. Anderson (Whales on Stilts: M.T. Anderson's Thrilling Tales)

"‘Jasper!’ said Katie. ‘Your machine was supposed to be making duplicate copies of all of the things that were photocopied during the week!’
‘Yes indeed. And so it did.’ He flung open a panel. ‘All ingeniously copied and transcribed onto one convenient wax roll, quite easily carried between the three of us.’ He hefted one end of the wax roll; it was as big as a carpet. ‘Come along. It’s a mere two hundred and twenty pounds. Try to keep one hand free for making fists. We may have to bash our way out of here.’"
— M.T. Anderson (Whales on Stilts: M.T. Anderson's Thrilling Tales)

""I protested, 'A man is known by his deeds.'

'Oh, that's sure,' said Bono. 'Just like a house is known by its deeds. The deeds say who owns it, who sold it, and who'll be buying a new one when it gets knocked down.'""
— M.T. Anderson

"‘We could sing to lift our spirits,’ one of them suggested.
Believe me, you want me to end the chapter now.
"
— M.T. Anderson (The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen)

"In my fancy, you perch in the Cooperage & I smell the Peel of the Wood, & the Staves are around you & the white Hogsheads newly bound & the Shavings curled and looped upon the Floor, silver and gold--& you are eating a fat Mushroom."
— M.T. Anderson (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party)

""You know who you should ask about this? My pal Ray, who works with me. He could tell you all about this." Lily's dad nodded. "Except he was taken out of the office a few days ago with his hands tied behind his back and a bandanna tied as a gag on his mouth." Her father thought for a second. "Huh. He hasn't been in to work since. I wonder if he has the flu.""
— M.T. Anderson (Whales on Stilts)

"You need the noise of your friends in space."
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"...I meditated on the passage of time, and how it may be found in both a dry and a wet or gaseous state; how, though lush, it might be dessicated for storage."
— M.T. Anderson (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party)

"He was possessed of a belief that nothing existed, or to be more precise, that only when things were perceived could we be sure that they existed. He troubled himself in arguments, therefore, that when he was not in his chamber, and no one else was in his chamber, there was no one who could say beyond a shadow of a doubt that his desk still existed... or that the bed had not simply frayed into atoms...[Dr. 03-01] developed the habit of quietly leaving company quite suddenly and charging above-stairs to his bedchamber, throwing open the door, and crying "Ah ha!" He found, always, that matter had retained its dubious solidity in his absence; but this did not deter him."
— M.T. Anderson (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party)

"There's an ancient saying in Japan, that life is like walking from one side of infinite darkness to another, on a bridge of dreams. They say that we're all crossing the bridge of dreams together. That there's nothing more than that. Just us, on the bridge of dreams."
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

"To participate, then, in the pomp of the orchestra, in the full scintillation thereof, was in the highest degree thrilling. Is this not the image of the perfect republic -- each instrument singing its wonted melody, endeavoring at once to express its part, and, in the same instance to conform its voice to the conversation of the whole?"
— M.T. Anderson (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves)

"I am messaging you to say that I love you, and that you're completely wrong about me thinking you're stupid. I always thought you could teach me things. I was always waiting. You're not like the others. You say things that no one expects you to. You think you're stupid. You want to be stupid. But you're someone people could learn from."
— M.T. Anderson (Feed)

" ‘Jasper!’ said Katie. ‘Your machine was supposed to be making duplicate copies of all of the things that were photocopied during the week!’
‘Yes indeed. And so it did.’ He flung open a panel. ‘All ingeniously copied and transcribed onto one convenient wax roll, quite easily carried between the three of us.’ He hefted one end of the wax roll; it was as big as a carpet. ‘Come along. It’s a mere two hundred and twenty pounds. Try to keep one hand free for making fists. We may have to bash our way out of here.’

"
— M.T. Anderson (The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen)

"‘Jasper!’ said Katie. ‘Your machine was supposed to be making duplicate copies of all of the things that were photocopied during the week!’
‘Yes indeed. And so it did.’ He flung open a panel. ‘All ingeniously copied and transcribed onto one convenient wax roll, quite easily carried between the three of us.’ He hefted one end of the wax roll; it was as big as a carpet. ‘Come along. It’s a mere two hundred and twenty pounds. Try to keep one hand free for making fists. We may have to bash our way out of here.’"
— M.T. Anderson (The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen)

"...I mediated on the passage of time, and how it may be found in both a dry and a wet or gaseous state; how, though lush, it might be desiccated for storage."
— M.T. Anderson (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party)

"I remember the fireflies always being out … but probably that was only once or twice. You know how, when you’re remembering, you put beautiful things everywhere. You spread them out, and they fill the whole memory. Even if there weren’t fireflies every night we played there, those were firefly times."
— M.T. Anderson (Whales on Stilts: M.T. Anderson's Thrilling Tales)

"'We ain't anything more than a name and some likes and some distastes, and a story we tell about ourselves.'
'And what others say about us.'"
— M.T. Anderson