Mark Danielson

“The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“What joins men together is not the sharing of bread but sharing of enemies.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“But anyway, I look around sometimes and I think - this will maybe sound weird - it's like the corporate world's full of ghosts. And actually, let me revise that, my parents are in academia so I've had front row seats for that horror show, I know academia's no different, so maybe a fairer way of putting this would be to say that adulthood's full of ghosts."

"I'm sorry, I'm not sure I quite --"

"I'm talking about these people who've ended up in one life instead of another and they are just so disappointed. Do you know what I mean? They've done what's expected of them. They want to do something different but it's impossible now, there's a mortgage, kids, whatever, they're trapped. Dan's like that."

"You don't think he likes his job, then."

"Correct," she said, "but I don't think he even realises it. You probably encounter people like him all the time. High-functioning sleepwalkers, essentially.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“It is early in November of 1942 and a simply unbelievable amount of shit is going on, all at once, everywhere.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon