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“If I could put my finger on the moment we genuinely fucked ourselves, it was the moment we decided that data was something you could use words like believe or disbelieve around.”
“You get worked up about what’s right and wrong, but that shit’s only in your head. Rules are what the big dogs say they are. The reason you pay tax is so they forget to kill you today. That’s what you buy with tax. You got it?”
“I used to know this Indian guy. Skinny dude, came over from India. Didn’t have a wife or family anymore. Maybe they were back there in India, I can’t remember. Anyway, the thing he said that stuck with me was that people are alone here in America. They’re all alone. And they don’t trust anyone except themselves, and they don’t rely on anyone except themselves. He said that was why he thought India would survive all this apocalyptic shit, but America wouldn’t. Because here, no one knew their neighbors.”
“Never underestimate the incompetence of a government salary,”
The maelstrom of fear could drive almost anyone to become less than they were. To tear apart your neighbors, to string them up on fences.
“Sometimes you realize that not risking something so you can live is worse than dying.”
“Remember that, mijo. We live by the sword, and we die by the sword. Make a meal of lead, and lead makes a meal of you.”
‘It is better to live in a wasteland, than with an angry woman.’
“Under the right pressure, everyone breaks. You beat someone enough, they talk. You threaten someone enough, they move. You scare someone enough, they sign.”
You didn’t judge people for caving under pressure; you judged them for those few times when they were lucky enough to have any choice at all.
“No point in wishing people were something different. That’s how people get killed.”
Not all epic quests ended in success. Instead, paranoid and greedy people made stupid mistakes. People died and hurt each other and struggled, and in the end everyone came up dry.
Some people had to bleed so other people could drink. Simple as that. It was just his turn.
“She thinks the world is supposed to be one way, but it’s not. It’s already changed. And she can’t see it, ’cause she only sees how it used to be. Before. When things were old.”
