Crosstalk

by Connie Willis

Our whole evolutionary history has been about trying to stop information from getting communicated—camouflage, protective coloration, that ink that squids squirt, encrypted passwords, corporate secrets, lying. Especially lying. If people really wanted to communicate, they’d tell the truth, but they don’t.”

‘Press one if you wish to speak with someone who has no idea what’s going on. Press two if you want to stand here all day trying to figure out which button to push.’

‘Kathleen,’ I said to her, ‘if there aren’t times when you’re wantin’ to break his head in, then ’tis not love you’re in, ’tis only a romantic dream.’

‘Has he a generous heart?’ That’s what you should be askin’ yourselves,” Aunt Oona said. “ ‘Would he be willin’ to risk life and limb for me? And would I be willin’ to do the same for him?’ ”

And now it was no longer a case of out of the frying pan, into the fire. The frying pan had caught fire, too.

Do you know what people spend the majority of time thinking about?” “I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s canoodling.” “Nope, except for the under-twenty-five set. For everybody else, it’s the weather. Is it going to rain? Is it going to stop raining? Is it going to snow? Is it going to warm up? They think about it constantly. That, and money and how much they hate their jobs. And thank-you notes.” “Thank-you notes?”

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.”

Three o’clock’s when every doubt and regret and guilty thought bubbles up out of your subconscious to plague you. ‘The dark night of the soul,’ F. Scott Fitzgerald called it.”

Three o’clock in the morning might be romantic, but four fifteen definitely wasn’t.

“There’s nothing so bad that it couldn’t be worse.” —IRISH PROVERB