#ode

Joshua Joseph has no real hatred of modern technology - he just mistrusts the effortless, textureless surfaces, and the ease with which it trains you to do things in the way most convenient to the machine. Above all, he mistrusts duplication. A rare thing becomes a commonplace thing. A skill becomes a feature. The end is more important than the means. The child of the soul gives place to a product of the system....For anything really important, Joe prefers something with a history, an item which can name the hand which assembled it and will warm to the one that deploys it. A thing of life, rather than one of the many consumer items which humans use to make more clutter; strange parasitic devices with their own little ecosystems. ↗

— Nick Harkaway

#machines #moderism #technology #life

Always do the things fast in your life, because some things are coming from the future towards you; they may separate you forever from doing the things you want to do! Never forget, some things are coming from the future, be fast! ↗

— Mehmet Murat ildan

#life

The national interest cannot be defined as a common interest of the industrial, commercial, and financial companies of a country, because there is no such common interest; nor can it be defined as the life, liberty, and well-being of the citizens, because they are continually being adjured to sacrifice their well-being, their liberty, and their lives to the national interest. In the end a study of modern history leads to the conclusion that the national interest of every State consists in its capacity to make war. ↗

— Simone Weil

#national-interest #war #life

It is a little-known fact about covert operations that you will spend a lot of time with people you can’t really trust. They may be traitors and liars. We call them assets or informants. But mostly, in those days, I called him Zach. ↗

— Ally Carter

#gallagher-girls #only-the-good-spy-young #zach-goode #information

The modern hero is the outsider. His experience is rootless. He can go anywhere. He belongs nowhere. Being alien to nothing, he ends up being alienated from any type of community based on common tastes and interests. The borders of his country are the sides of his skull. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#experience

it was weird. Would you believe it if some supermodel called you up and told you she was your sister?’ Strike thought of his own bizarre family history. ‘Probably,’ he said. ↗

— Robert Galbraith

#family #history #siblings #supermodel #family

...it seemed a part of her life, to step from the ancient to the modern, back and forth. She felt rather sorry for those who knew only one and not the other. It was better, she thought, to be able to select from the whole menu of human achievements than to be bound within one narrow range. ↗

— Orson Scott Card

#modern #modern-society #traditional-society #life

I would scream for you if you would hear me. I would burn this place to the ground if it meant you would see the smoke. I love you – I know this. ↗

— Rebecca Maizel

#love

When you give another person the power to define you, then you also give them the power to control you. ↗

— Leslie Vernick

#love #relationships #love

Affection makes fools. Always, without exception, love digs a channel that's sooner or later flooded by the briny water of despair. ↗

— Sonya Hartnett

#briny-water #channel #despair #exception #flooded