The Phoenix Pencil Company Quotes

“In a world so full of hate and war, violence and betrayal, how can our stories not be all tragedies?”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“at 4:14 he said that for all of our suffering in this life, he hoped to still find me in our next one.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“Do not forget there is still pleasure in this life.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“There’s some research that shows if you change the way you see your own story, there can be profound benefits.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“for pretty much all my life I thought I was worse than my brothers. My parents instilled that story in me, whether they meant to or not, and just like that I didn’t believe I could do many things.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“if our stories will be lost, no matter how hard we try to preserve them, then the only thing that really matters is the people in our lives, and how we treat them in this moment in time.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“America had a good one, during the Great War. They had Native Americans transmit messages in their tribal languages. I have told you already how sorry I was to hear of your mother’s passing. I am even more sorry to hear how she was used. But the world has a history of exploiting people like you, people like your mother, people like the Native Americans, for their language and abilities, and then casting them aside.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“the man who is the greatest fortune I did not deserve, the awkward soup boy turned best grandfather, and in the middle, the steadfast partner who helped me in every way.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“data selling is the only kind of business model that works these days?”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“The plan to make EMBRS profitable was simple. It followed every other tech product model. Offer the tool for free. Let users experience the wondrous connections it could make. Then sell the journal data, the richest kind of data there is—stories of how we perceive ourselves, perfect for targeting ads, for language models, for letting us think we’ve automated something as important as human connection.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“the big tech employees wondering what role they played in our fractured democracy, our polarized political body, and media, when they had believed they were regular people with a particular talent, something unique to offer.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“even if I were a lost network packet, and grandmother and grandfather were too, that she, at least, was looking for us,”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“I did not like him much more than any other person I might have dated. You know I married him, that things worked out. But in those days, I hardly felt anything other than adrift. His arms locked me in place, slowed my descent.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“I’m just reading.” “It’s one of the only times you look happy.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“We heard about the forced confessions of business owners, how everyone was once again paranoid, trying to sniff out any capitalist leanings among their neighbors.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“you? How can you know when you’re young and sad and vulnerable how to choose someone to share your life with? And how can you know when you’re old and weak and vulnerable that someone will be kind to your granddaughter, long after you are gone?”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“Here’s your rebase message: You grew up beloved by all of your family except for the selfish ones who ran off for their own purposes. Your grandparents were hurt by your parents’ leaving, but they will never stop thanking the day they were left with you. They delighted in how quickly you learned everything and how you helped them embrace modern technology in a way that made all their friends jealous. Whenever they pulled out a phone and sent off a text message, their friends would exclaim, ‘Wow, you know how to use one of those doohickeys?’ and they would say, prouder than any parent, ‘Yes! My granddaughter makes sure we keep up to date and that we are protected from malware.’ It was no surprise to them when you got into one of the best colleges in the country and studied computer science, something you’ve always had a natural inclination toward.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“Tech is a means to connect with others,”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“You didn’t have many friends because your concerns didn’t align with most high schoolers, who cared only about popularity while you cared about your family. “In college you found people you could call your friends all while continuing to make your grandparents proud. Technology is still something you love, and you can’t wait to work in a burgeoning field where you can quickly make a difference. You want to use your skills to help. You already have, by using your project to reunite your grandmother with her cousin. You have always been about help and support, first to your grandparents, then to your friends. And your friends, even if there may not be many, are so grateful.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“The first sign of the civil war was inflation. I remember the day your mother gave you money to buy rice while you were out with your boy. But you returned empty-handed. The amount she had given you wasn’t enough.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“I couldn’t reconcile the Taiwan I knew with the Taiwan that EMBRS was trying to show me, a history of martial law and terror, its citizens disappeared or mysteriously killed for protesting, or simply for attending one wrong gathering.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“I tapped at my computer. I had spent so long searching for Meng, but I had never thought to search for grandmother. I tried all the tricks I had learned, and the results came up similarly blank. It was as if the world had accepted she was fading and was prepared to let her fully disappear.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“We passed each other questions and answers in the dark, each offering the other a little ledge of a foothold, something to keep the other moving forward.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“We were eighteen years old. The last eight years of our lives had been spent in constant fear of the Japanese, and the past four, under actual occupation.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“But how do you get stories from the past when you are no longer living in the moment? How do you get stories about a time period that is quickly aging out? What do you do when the people who have lived through a significant experience are dying or losing their memories? Computers can’t do anything about that. And pencils shouldn’t be able to either. But they can, with your grandmother’s ability.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“Written words are incredible in this way—they take a whole idea and condense it down with the help of the writer’s mind. The writer pulls in only the important parts. Each word is efficient, each tells the reader something.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“I am afraid of what my mind will be like without my memories. Will it be eternal blankness, a liminal focus on what is in front of me? Eventually, I won’t recognize or remember Torou. One day, maybe even Monica. A strange ordering, perhaps, but I am sure you or Monica will be the last person I remember. You were such a fixture of my childhood. The old memories, I’ve read, are the slowest to fade. And Monica because she is my life. If I forget her, then it is no longer me remembering. Merely the dregs left over, keeping my body moving.”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company

“I imagined my grandparents in the kitchen, their bent-over figures doing the same thing they had been doing for decades, but slower, less steady, their decline undeniable. I used to be able to ignore their age, their increasing frailty. Now”
― Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company