Jake > Jake's Quotes

“To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here’s where things grow.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“These false images are deflated so rapidly and completely you’re bound to be very discouraged very soon if you’ve derived your gumption from ego rather than Quality.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“The short summary is, babies and children are basically tripping all the time.”
― Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

“Patriotism is just an idea, so is capitalism or communism. But ideas can make men forget their own interests. And the guys in charge will exploit men who believe in ideas too much.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“After their first molt and after the trophic eggs have been consumed, black lace-weaver spiderlings are too large for their mother to care for, though they are in dire need of additional food. In an extreme act of parental care, she calls the babies to her by drumming on their web and presses her body down into the gathering crowd. The ravenous spiderlings swarm over their mother’s body. Then they eat her alive, draining her bodily fluids and leaving behind a husklike corpse.”
― Bill Schutt, Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History

“Cannibalism occurs in every class of vertebrates, from fish to mammals.”
― Bill Schutt, Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History

“In bony fishes that guard their own eggs, though, it’s usually the males who are involved, undertaking these chores at nests otherwise known as oviposition sites.”
― Bill Schutt, Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History

“These are matters of settled custom,” he wrote, before paraphrasing the lyric poet Pindar, “And custom is King of all.” In other words, society defines what is right and what is wrong.”
― Bill Schutt, Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History

“The past is always beautiful. So, for that matter, is the future. Only the present hurts, and we carry it around like an abscess of suffering, our companion between two infinities of happiness and peace.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Submission

“Sounded like gibberish.”
― Sue Coletta, Marred

“Wanting lowColors to be equal to Peerless in warfare is not the same as them being equal.”
― Pierce Brown, Dark Age

“A zero day, in hacker jargon, is a secret security flaw in software, one that the company who created and maintains the software’s code doesn’t know about.”
― Andy Greenberg, Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers

“The link between Sandworm and a Cimplicity file that phoned home to a server in Sweden was enough for Wilhoit to come to a startling conclusion: Sandworm wasn’t merely focused on espionage. Intelligence-gathering operations don’t break into industrial control systems. Sandworm seemed to be going further, trying to reach into victims’ systems that could potentially hijack physical machinery, with physical consequences.”
― Andy Greenberg, Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers

“Life is meant to be felt. Else why live? Valleys make the mountains.”
― Pierce Brown, Dark Age

“In late August 1854, there was a severe cholera outbreak in London. The Broad Street area in Soho was the epicenter, with a hundred and twenty-seven dead in the first three days and more than five hundred dead by the second week of September.”
― Nadine Burke Harris, The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma and Adversity—A Transformative Guide to Understanding Childhood Trauma and Health

“he’s trained in regime destabilization.”
― Pierce Brown, Dark Age

“The Obelisk rises, stained red all along the bottom. Blood runs through the grooves. People from the crowd rush forward to dip their kerchiefs and banners in the blood troughs.”
― Pierce Brown, Dark Age

“Sevro just watches as the iron wolf begins to glow with heat. The iron thumps as the Howlers inside try to kick their way out. Smoke slithers through the wolf’s nostrils. Then the trapped men and women inside begin”
― Pierce Brown, Dark Age

“Ten minutes later I’m shrieking like a goat on the floor just inside Sevro’s room as a medicus pulls needles from my face, chest, and ass.”
― Pierce Brown, Dark Age

“How many had brothers or pas cry like babies as you were dragged away, but didn’t lift a bloodydamn finger”
― Pierce Brown, Dark Age

“With all of them watching, I stick the pliers in my mouth, secure the iron bits to my second back molar, and jerk hard. The tooth doesn’t come out straight, but I saw Victra plop out a baby standing up without a single yelp. I rock twice and jerk again, using both my arms. The blood pours down the back of my throat as the tooth and root burst out. I hold up the pliers, open my mouth so they all see, and then I swallow the blood.”
― Pierce Brown, Dark Age

“Listen, you don’t have to join in. All I need is you to be quiet, right? We’ll get you home.”
― Pierce Brown, Dark Age

“Harmony lived on pain. She’ll get it to the end. I don’t miss the lesson.”
― Pierce Brown, Dark Age

“They invert and shoot upward, crunching into the ceiling. I lower the intensity and let them float, unconscious. Wait, one’s not unconscious. Crunch a second time into the ceiling.”
― Pierce Brown, Dark Age

“Volsung straddles his daughter, putting his weight on her tailbone, and sets to grim work. With the knife from his waist, he cuts open her vest to reveal Sefi’s tattooed back. In a tender sawing motion, he carves off two long flaps of flesh from the shoulder blades to the tailbone, exposing her rib cage. She flails like a punctured fish. Then with a small axe from his hip, Volsung hacks at the ribs on either side of her spine. She jerks in agony, but no sound escapes her. He discards the hatchet and pries open her rib cage from behind to expose her lungs. Tears leak from her eyes. She gasps for air. As peaceful as a man cleaning a fish, Volsung takes a handful of salt from a pouch and throws it on the wounds.”
― Pierce Brown, Dark Age

“Will you ride with me today?”
― Pierce Brown, Dark Age

“With his death imminent, the worlds feel emptier. Almost as cavernous as they did when Cassius fell. One by one, the titans of my youth disappear, and freed from their shadow, I do not feel liberated. I feel bereft.”
― Pierce Brown, Dark Age

“I know they’re a little dog-eared,”
― Kanae Minato, Confessions

“But even then, it takes a certain amount of courage to be the first one to come out and blame someone else. What if no one else joins you? No one else stands up to condemn the wrongdoer? On the other hand, it’s easy to join in condemning someone once someone else has gotten the ball rolling. You don’t even have to put yourself out there; all you have to do is say, “Me, too!” It doesn’t end there: You also get the benefit of feeling that you’re doing good by picking on someone evil—it can even be a kind of stress release. Once you’ve done it, though, you may find that you want that feeling again—that you need someone else to accuse just to get the rush back. You may have started with real bad guys, but the second time around you may have to look further down the food chain, be more and more creative in your charges and accusations.”
― Kanae Minato, Confessions

“That night, Naoki killed his mother.”
― Kanae Minato, Confessions