Meredith > Recent Status Updates

Paul: Thufir, old friend, as you can see, my back is toward no door.
Thufir: The universe is full of doors.

Frank: It is painful to recall how earnestly those [union members] believed in democracy, how deeply they seemed to feel that if average Americans could just get together and talk it over and settle on a plan, why, they could take on multinational corporations. Solidarity would prevail over everything. It was like something out of Lincoln’s time. Or Roosevelt’s, anyway.

Frank: That was the essential New Democrat idea: The world has changed, but certain Democratic voters expected their politicians to help them cling to a status that globalization had long since revoked. However, a true statesman—a real New Democrat—would challenge them to open their eyes.

Frank: Professionalism is “postindustrial ideology,” and today the Democrats are the party of the professional class.

Frank: We can now pinpoint the exact moment when the Obama administration formally renounced any intention of making the big historical turn it had been elected to make: it was the meeting between the new president and a roomful of Wall Street CEOs on March 27, 2009 ... [Obama reassures them] that he had no intention of restructuring their industry or changing the economic direction of the nation.

Frank: “Inequality” is shorthand for all the things that have gone to make the lives of the rich so measurably more delicious, year on year for three decades — and also for the things that have made the lives of working people so wretched and so precarious.

Larkin: Do you think words have answers?
Byrd: It depends on your questions.

Kazu: You can go back [in time], but when you go back, no matter how hard you try, the present won't change.
Fumiko: That sort of defeats the purpose, don't you think?
Kazu: That's the rule.

Hirai: Tears are a woman's weapon.