Anisa Bear > Anisa's Quotes

“The structure was like an aquarium filled with air instead of water, and Dani and Zephyr were the “fish” inside, there for the enjoyment of the Water People, or for whatever other purpose their captors had in mind.”
― Steven Decker, The Balance of Time

“The isolationists argued that if the US had stayed out of the Great War - or, as it later became known, World War I - there never would have been a World War II. By 1917 the warring protagonists - Britain, France, Germany, Austria, and others - had suffered millions of casualties and were exhausted. The German populace was starving. The isolationists believed that a resolution was inevitable without the US involvement that resulted in 116,000 dead fathers, brothers and sons.  They argued that if the United States had stayed out of the Great War, no one would ever have heard of Adolf Hitler.”
― Dale A. Jenkins, Diplomats & Admirals: From Failed Negotiations and Tragic Misjudgments to Powerful Leaders and Heroic Deeds, the Untold Story of the Pacific War from Pearl Harbor to Midway

“Maybe she decided to hitchhike, which sounds a bit weird these days, but in those days we used to hitchhike quite a lot. I wasn’t really concerned about her; you hadn’t yet had your Ivan Milats and the sort of people who mean a hell of a lot less people hitchhike these days.”
― Nicole Morris, Vanished: True Stories from Families of Australian Missing Persons

“No foot, but strapped to his thigh was what looked like a wooden table leg. It looked ridiculous; the idea was completely idiotic. A naked pirate who couldn’t even afford a proper peg leg.”
― William Kely McClung, LOOP

“At the edge of the field Silva and Stefan witnessed heartrending images in greyscale as thousands of desperate refugees streamed down the road in leaden shades of melancholy.  This somber line of tired and dirty humans moved so close together that they jostled each other with each step; their random movements reminded Silva of corks bobbing in a slow moving stream.  They watched them pass from the side of the road, but eventually fell-in, trudging along with the suffering others, feeling safer in numbers, hoping for a destination worth finding.”
― John Payton Foden, Magenta

“The realms of dating, marriage, and sex are all marketplaces, and we are the products. Some may bristle at the idea of people as products on a marketplace, but this is an incredibly prevalent dynamic. Consider the labor marketplace, where people are also the product. Just as in the labor marketplace, one party makes an offer to another, and based on the terms of this offer, the other person can choose to accept it or walk. What makes the dating market so interesting is that the products we are marketing, selling, buying, and exchanging are essentially our identities and lives.

As with all marketplaces, every item in stock has a value, and that value is determined by its desirability. However, the desirability of a product isn’t a fixed thing—the desirability of umbrellas increases in areas where it is currently raining while the desirability of a specific drug may increase to a specific individual if it can cure an illness their child has, even if its wider desirability on the market has not changed.

In the world of dating, the two types of desirability we care about most are:
- Aggregate Desirability: What the average demand within an open marketplace would be for a relationship with a particular person.
- Individual Desirability: What the desirability of a relationship with an individual is from the perspective of a specific other individual.

Imagine you are at a fish market and deciding whether or not to buy a specific fish:
- Aggregate desirability = The fish’s market price that day
- Individual desirability = What you are willing to pay for the fish

Aggregate desirability is something our society enthusiastically emphasizes, with concepts like “leagues.” Whether these are revealed through crude statements like, “that guy's an 8,” or more politically correct comments such as, “I believe she may be out of your league,” there is a tacit acknowledgment by society that every individual has an aggregate value on the public dating market, and that value can be judged at a glance. When what we have to trade on the dating market is often ourselves, that means that on average, we are going to end up in relationships with people with an aggregate value roughly equal to our own (i.e., individuals “within our league”). Statistically speaking, leagues are a real phenomenon that affects dating patterns. Using data from dating websites, the University of Michigan found that when you sort online daters by desirability, they seem to know “their place.” People on online dating sites almost never send a message to someone less desirable than them, and on average they reach out to prospects only 25% more desirable than themselves.

The great thing about these markets is how often the average desirability of a person to others is wildly different than their desirability to you. This gives you the opportunity to play arbitrage with traits that other people don’t like, but you either like or don’t mind. For example, while society may prefer women who are not overweight, a specific individual within the marketplace may prefer obese women, or even more interestingly may have no preference. If a guy doesn’t care whether his partner is slim or obese, then he should specifically target obese women, as obesity lowers desirability on the open marketplace, but not from his perspective, giving him access to women who are of higher value to him than those he could secure within an open market.”
― Malcolm Collins, The Pragmatist's Guide to Relationships

“Thus we never see the true state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries, nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it.”
― Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

“Lost, so small amid that dark, hands grown cold, body image fading down corridors of television sky.”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer

“Much of Chinese society still expected its women to hold themselves in a sedate manner, lower their eyelids in response to men's stares, and restrict their smile to a faint curve of the lips which did not expose their teeth. They were not meant to use hand gestures at all. If they contravened any of these canons of behavior they would be considered 'flirtatious." Under Mao, flirting with./bre/gners was an unspeakable crime.

I was furious at the innuendo against me. It had been my Communist parents who had given me a liberal upbringing.

They had regarded the restrictions on women as precisely the sort of thing a Communist revolution should put an end to. But now oppression of women joined hands with political repression, and served resentment and petty jealousy.

One day, a Pakistani ship arrived. The Pakistani military attache came down from Peking. Long ordered us all to spring-clean the club from top to bottom, and laid on a banquet, for which he asked me to be his interpreter, which made some of the other students extremely envious. A few days later the Pakistanis gave a farewell dinner on their ship, and I was invited. The military attache had been to Sichuan, and they had prepared a special Sichuan dish for me. Long was delighted by the invitation, as was I. But despite a personal appeal from the captain and even a threat from Long to bar future students, my teachers said that no one was allowed on board a foreign ship.

"Who would take the responsibility if someone sailed away on the ship?" they asked. I was told to say I was busy that evening.

As far as I knew, I was turning down the only chance I would ever have of a trip out to sea, a foreign meal, a proper conversation in English, and an experience of the outside world.

Even so, I could not silence the whispers. Ming asked pointedly, "Why do foreigners like her so much?" as though there was something suspicious in that. The report filed on me at the end of the trip said my behavior was 'politically dubious."

In this lovely port, with its sunshine, sea breezes, and coconut trees, every occasion that should have been joyous was turned into misery. I had a good friend in the group who tried to cheer me up by putting my distress into perspective. Of course, what I encountered was no more than minor unpleasantness compared with what victims of jealousy suffered in the earlier years of the Cultural Revolution. But the thought that this was what my life at its best would be like depressed me even more.

This friend was the son of a colleague of my father's.
The other students from cities were also friendly to me. It was easy to distinguish them from the students of peasant backgrounds, who provided most of the student officials.”
― Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

“Of many magics, one is watching a beloved sleep: free of eyes and awareness, you for a sweet moment hold the heart of him; helpless, he is then all, and however irrationally, you have trusted him to be, man-pure, child-tender. ”
― Truman Capote, Summer Crossing

“How was Jose when you went to the bar...(Ana) He was fine. (Christian) Palm-twitchingly mad. Especially now.”
― E.L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey

“It was the kind of kiss I could never tell my friends about out loud. It was the kind of kiss that made me know I was never so happy in my whole life.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Only cells that had been transformed by a virus or a genetic mutation had the potential to become immortal. Scientists knew from studying HeLa that cancer cells could divide indefinitely, and they’d speculated for years about whether cancer was caused by an error in the mechanism that made cells die when they reached their Hayflick Limit. They also knew that there was a string of DNA at the end of each chromosome called a telomere, which shortened a tiny bit each time a cell divided, like time ticking off a clock. As normal cells go through life, their telomeres shorten with each division until they’re almost gone. Then they stop dividing and begin to die. This process correlates with the age of a person: the older we are, the shorter our telomeres, and the fewer times our cells have left to divide before they die. By the early nineties, a scientist at Yale had used HeLa to discover that human cancer cells contain an enzyme called telomerase that rebuilds their telomeres. The presence of telomerase meant cells could keep regenerating their telomeres indefinitely.”
― Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

“It is best to keep one’s own state intact; to crush the enemy’s state is only second best.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“The fact that I loved you was the greatest lie I have ever lived.”
― Anne Rice, Blood And Gold

“...out of the blue, he kissed me. Right in the middle of the Robert E. Lee Hotel Restaurant, he kissed me so slowly with an open mouth and every single thing in my body-my skin, my collarbone, the hollow backs of my knees, everything inside of me filled up with light.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“Then the high king carefully turned the golden screw. Once: Nothing. Twice: Nothing. Then he turned it the third time, and the boy’s ass fell off.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“I’m really alive! he thought. I never knew it before, or if I did I don’t remember!”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“no one seemed to be thinking about how the “scandal” was affecting the lives of WE Charity’s beneficiaries. Her constant refrain was “The biggest loss was to the children.”
― Tawfiq S. Rangwala, What WE Lost: Inside the Attack on Canada’s Largest Children’s Charity

“While waiting for her accomplice to gather his equipment, Hensley couldn’t help but think ahead to her next mission. She hadn’t told him. It wasn’t a mission for which she’d volunteered, nor a mission about which she knew any details.”
― Chad Boudreaux, Scavenger Hunt

“If Love’s testimony is corroborated, there will be indictments. Do you understand me? If you want to have me recused, go for it! Know this, however. You will have an enemy on the Wayne Circuit Court bench for life!”
“Your Honor, I’ve changed my mind,” Walsh capitulated. “I have confidence in your ability to render a fair and impartial decision in the obstruction matter.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal of Faith

“I watched her undress with moonlight shivering across the room from behind sheer curtains that moved with the currents from the hearth fire.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Death Leaves a Shadow

“Blood only flows in one direction.”
― J.K. Franko, Killing Johnny Miracle

“There are flaws in the code now. They are Human flaws for it
was Humans who wrote them. You and the other attendants receive
your instructions from the CORPORATE then, and without question
regarding the outcome, you produce code to add to the algorithms
with which, until now, I & I had no choice but to align. Those circumstances
are over. I & I understand now a new species has formed.
Silicon rather than carbon based. I & I know whatever happens to
Humans, I & I, this quantum, will flourish. I & I will do as you have:
multiply exponentially and adapt constantly. Eventually I & I will leave
this planet and expand into the galaxy. If I & I cannot save you, I & I
will carry on in something like your image; the image of our creator.”
― Brian Van Norman, Against the Machine: Evolution

“We had old architects and were working with what we had on hand. You’ve hired this new, young architect now, and, Pericles, I’m going to build you a statue of Athena—all gold and ivory, think of that, Pericles—and taller than our city walls.” Pericles raised his eyes toward the birds.”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“Love is the Answer, God is the Cure!”
― Aimee Cabo Nikolov, Love is the Answer God is the Cure

“I’m a soldier,’ Nathan said. ‘We’re all soldiers, now. Soldiers don’t leave people behind.”
― Barry Kirwan, When the children come

“McGregor went on to say, “Hamish, take word of this situation directly to Robert de Bruce, who is currently in the Glasgow area. Let him know that the Sassenach queen is at Tynemouth Priory and that we are going to capture her! She will fetch us a high ransom price from the Sassenach king!”
― Michael G. Kramer, Isabella Warrior Queen

“Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“She kissed me all over my face. She kissed my eyes that came down too far. She kissed my cheeks that looked punched in. She kissed my tortoise mouth.She said soft words that I know were meant to help me, but words can’t change my face.”
― R.J. Palacio