More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Nearly everyone could be undone by an old woman’s displeasure.
Your body loves you too much to let you really feel trauma like that.
The ugly truth was that these patients weren’t here to be cured. There were no cures for them. They had illnesses that had to be managed, by them and by those who treated them. They were like ships that would never find a shore. The most you could do was bring them supplies; the most they could do was get used to the rocking, the unpredictability, of the vast, impenetrable ocean below them.
It wasn’t about whether or not he took his pills, and it wasn’t about whether or not some kids had a little weed in their pockets. This wasn’t about an infraction, but dictating a philosophy of life: certain types of people must be overseen.
The twenty-first century threatened to look a bit like the nineteenth.
Maybe nobody ever saw themselves completely objectively. Every self-image needs a flattering mirror or two.
“I haven’t been a girl since I was thirteen. I’m just a diagnosis.”
Josephine made twelve dollars an hour at this job. That should put all cries for courageousness into context. Taking this job for that pay had already been an act of bravery.
With rules that defied all common logic; people employed to help you who are unable, really, to even hear you; the sense that the system’s goal is only to keep trouble contained.
Most systems barely work, but those same systems cover their asses much more successfully.
Pepper kept making the mistake of confusing the appearance of sanity with the real thing.
We doubt the world works this way, because it has never worked this way against us.
cameras are considered legally sane.
when a woman likes a man, nothing about him remains common. It’s his. Especially his.
He knew that seduction was 96 percent preparation. (The other 4 percent was brushing your teeth.)
Hard times make people scared. And scared people see monsters everywhere.”
“One day the truth came to me. A wise man once said that every system is designed to give you the results you actually get. If you understand that, you’ll see that this system is working.” “For some people,” Pepper said. Dr. Anand shook his head emphatically. “No. Wrong. The system is working exactly right for those it was intended for. That’s why it hasn’t been fixed. Because it isn’t broken!
I love being an American and I know it hurts me.
“The system is working and it hates us.”
Success is airmail, not email.
“That’s the funny thing,” she said. “Men always want to die for something. For someone. I can see the appeal. You do it once and it’s done. No more worrying, not knowing, about tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. I know you all think it sounds brave, but I’ll tell you something even braver. To struggle and fight for the ones you love today. And then do it all over again the next day. Every day. For your whole life. It’s not as romantic, I admit. But it takes a lot of courage to live for someone, too.”
“I’m saying they were dying,” Louis said. “They definitely weren’t making that up. But it wasn’t a monster that was killing them. It was the mine.”
Our trials don’t change, only the court.
The rats even had their own name for the beast. Not the Devil. What do rats know of such things? They called him “With Teeth.”
Equator Zero makes patients profitable in perpetuity. That’s how Dr. Anand put it once. You all are worth more to them missing than present. More lucrative dead than alive.”
He hoped to reflect the world’s own glory, with love. An artistic impulse, but one not exclusive to artists. For instance, Coffee. For instance, Dorry. And now, Pepper. The aspiration is so rarely rewarded, or even understood, that most people don’t even try. But wherever it’s found, whenever it’s displayed, it’s an act of genius.
