Bullet Train (Assassins #2)

by Kōtarō Isaka

Probably nothing going on inside, thinks Tangerine. Often the case with people who don’t read fiction. Hollow inside, monochrome, so they can switch gears no problem. They swallow something and forget about it as soon as it goes down their throat. Constitutionally incapable of empathy. These are the people who most need to read, but in most cases it’s already too late.

‘Live like you’re alive? What’s that supposed to mean? How could you live any other way?’ ‘Actually, most people live pretty aimlessly, wouldn’t you say?

Old people are so black and white in their thinking. They look down on the Net, or they’re afraid of it. They put a label on something to make themselves feel better. Even though it doesn’t matter whether you get the information online or not, it matters how you use the information. And then there are younger people who say that you can’t trust anything on TV or in the newspapers and that the adults who swallow it all are morons, but I think that they’re the morons for swallowing the notion that everything on TV and in the papers is automatically false. It’s so obvious that any source of information is a mix of truths and untruths, but everyone wants to say that one is better than another.’