Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia (Zoey Ashe #3)

by Jason Pargin

what was the point of drinking if you were just going to cling to your inhibitions?

If you give anything away for free without limits, you’re automatically setting it at the wrong price and the market will adjust. The cost isn’t due to greed, it’s to make sure you value the sandwich enough to actually eat it.

some games, you’re playing whether you choose to or not.

cruelty is more addictive than any drug ever sold on these streets. Your average citizen just wants a righteous excuse before they dose.”

government should be like a hot-water heater: if it’s working right, you never even think about it.

That’s the problem with our whole system, our whole society: power goes to the ones who want it most and the ones who want it most tend to be more conniving and diabolical than any of the supposed street thugs they’re trying to scare you about.

Apparently politics was just hustling from one dishonest conversation to the next, for every waking hour of the day. No wonder only the crazy people want to do it.

I learned quickly that the advantage of bullies isn’t in their strength but in what they are willing to do, being unafraid of consequences or of breaking the rules. What they each discovered about me was not just that I knew where to strike a man to bring him to his knees, but that I was willing to deliver that strike. As I have grown older I have become frightened of how much of an advantage that grants a man in this world.”

When I was a kid, my dad forbid us from playing any video games. Not for the usual reasons—because they were addictive or a waste of time—he said games teach a really bad lesson, which is that every problem has some neat solution. You enter a room, there’s a door, that means there must be a key that opens that door, and there’s a sword in that room and that must mean you’ll need it to kill the dragon later. But in real life, you don’t get that. You think there’s some perfect way for society to handle sex work, or policing, or just vice in general. That it’s just a lock that needs the right key. The real world isn’t like that, it’s all just a bunch of trade-offs. If you legalize drugs, you get addicts in the park and ruined lives. If you do prohibition, you get jails packed with traffickers and black markets ruled by whoever is the best at murder. You’re driving yourself crazy asking where’s the exact solution, as if the universe is presenting all of this as a series of obstacles to test you. When in reality, all you can do is manage the problems and minimize damage.”

I know you’re bad for me but the hungry, grunting pig-monster that lives inside me doesn’t care. It’s in charge of my diet, too. It feeds on vice and poops regret.”

“And now you know why the very first human cities all had a common ingredient that made them work. We wouldn’t have a civilization without it.” “The law?” “Alcohol.”

“what the citizens want couldn’t be simpler: They want all evildoers to be instantly apprehended and punished, with perfect accuracy and no inconvenience to the innocent. They want jobs with good pay, flexibility, and low stress but also want all products and services to be available instantly, at all hours, and dirt cheap. They want generous government infrastructure and benefits, but without paying taxes. In other words, they want the impossible. So what they get instead is a show.”

A man’s reputation is all he has.” “Well, now, there’s where I do have to disagree. A man’s character is all he has.

“I am swimming to stay ahead of a dark thing slithering through the water behind me.”

“There’s no such thing as a leaderless group, humans don’t work that way. Someone is filling that role, it’s just a matter of whether the nature of the group allows for titles to make it official.