Adam > Adam's Quotes

“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”
― Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

“Like most gunters, I voted to reelect Cory Doctorow and Wil Wheaton (again). There were no term limits, and those two geezers had been doing a kick-ass job of protecting user rights for over a decade.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“Paarfi undertakes a detailed examination on the virtues of brevity:

It would seem, therefore, that if we allow our readers, by virtue of being in the company of the historian, to eavesdrop on this interchange, we will have, in one scene, discharged two obligations; a sacrifice, if we may say so, to the god Brevity, whom all historians, indeed, all who work with the written word, ought to worship. We cannot say too little on this subject.”
― Steven Brust, The Phoenix Guards

“Chapter the Eleventh: In Which the Plot, Behaving in Much the Manner Of a Soup to which Corn Starch Has been Added, Begins, at Last, to Thicken.”
― Steven Brust, The Phoenix Guards

“The others followed, and found themselves in a small, stuffy basement, which would have been damp, smelly, close, and dark, were it not, in fact, well-lit, which prevented it from being dark.”
― Steven Brust, The Phoenix Guards

“You couldn't changed history. But you could get it right to start with. Do something differently the FIRST time around.
This whole business with seeking Slytherin's secrets... seemed an awful lot like the sort of thing where, years later, you would look back and say, 'And THAT was where it all started to go wrong.'
And he would wish desperately for the ability to fall back through time and make a different choice.
Wish granted. Now what?”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Unfortunately it's also true to say that good management is a bit like oxygen - it's invisible and you don't notice its presence until it's gone, and then you're sorry.”
― Charles Stross, The Fuller Memorandum

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a sane employee in possession of his wits must be in want of a good manager.”
― Charles Stross, The Fuller Memorandum

“Things are finally going my way. In fact, they’re going great! I have a chance to live after all! LOG ENTRY: SOL 37 I am fucked, and I’m gonna die!”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“I have a scholar's love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“[19:29] JOHANSSEN: When we pick you up, I will make wild, passionate love to you. Prepare your body.
[19:29] JOHANSSEN: I didn’t type that! That was Martinez! I stepped away from the console for like 10 seconds!”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“there is no honour among consultants.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“In fact, I didn’t really want to have final words at all, unless they involved something like, “At last, I have transcended beyond the boundaries of my frail human existence.”
― Andrew Rowe, On the Shoulders of Titans

“May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.”
― George Carlin

“readers wanting more detail are referred to Broedenour’s thirty-seven volume work Waaaagh! and Peace: The Siege of Perlia and its Neighbouring Systems. (Had the author of this magisterial work not been tragically killed by a toppling library stack before its completion it would undoubtedly be regarded as the definitive work on the subject. As it is, it remains an unsurpassed work of reference for anyone interested in the minutiae of the first nine weeks of the two-year campaign.)”
― Sandy Mitchell, Defender of the Imperium