More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
She’d think she was being comforting, even if the number she came up with meant “I’m leaving you.” Even if it meant “there is no coming back from this.” Even if it meant goodbye.
Numbers are simple, obedient things, as long as you understand the rules they live by. Words are trickier. They twist and bite and require too much attention. He has to think to change the world. His sister just does it.
Tabitha Tomala liked this
Children who seem human create guilt in the men who paid for them.
Yes, of course a new order will rise, and it’s only natural that they should be at the forefront. They’ve earned it. They’ve paid for it, and by paying, they have made themselves entitled to every benefit, every opportunity. This is theirs, and no one else’s.
That which can be found without looking can’t possibly be dangerous, after all.
“It was a good idea to get a few of the answers wrong. I didn’t think to do that.” Dodger shrugs. “People don’t believe things that are too perfect.”
Roger guesses people all over the world must use the same tone when they talk to the smart kids, like they were bombs on the edge of going off, instead of children with brains too big for the people they’re supposed to be.
“Girl nerds are in even more trouble than boy nerds, because everybody says we don’t exist, or if we do exist, it’s because we’re trying to get the boy nerds to like us. I don’t like any of the boy nerds in my school. I’m smarter than all of them, so they’re mean to me just like everybody else.”
“Everything can talk. It’s simply a matter of learning how best to listen.”
You can’t skip to the end of the story just because you’re tired of being in the middle. You’d never survive.” Roger looks at her for a long moment, puzzling through her latest words, comparing them to the ones she started with. Finally, he asks, “Are you saying that because we’ve already tried?”
It’s better that way. Boring, balding, hidebound old men don’t deserve to change the universe. They think they do, but boring, balding, hidebound old men have always believed they deserve absolutely everything.
“We’re already past tense for these people,” says Erin. “Let them be past tense for you, too. Come on. We need to find your sister, before it’s too late.”
WHERE IS BILL
“I’m saying if they wanted to control the elemental forces of creation, they shouldn’t have turned us into people. People have their own agendas. Mine doesn’t match theirs anymore.”
Here is a secret about powerful men, one they would prefer go unspoken: their arrogance is one of the greatest forces in the universe. Even the most paranoid among them see what they want to see, believe what they want to believe, and this creates cracks through which the clever may insinuate themselves, changing the story around them.
“He survived the earthquake. That cat’s unkillable. Erin put him in the neighbor’s yard before she set the house on fire.”
YEEEEEEES
