He wore a furry silk hat, and the frequent substitution of twine and shoelaces for buttons, apparent at critical points of his costume, marked a man essentially bachelor.
– H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man
There is no more to be said about disorder than it says itself.
– Tor Norretranders, The User Illusion
Everyone knows how different we all are from each other.
– Michael Specter, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives
…human beings know more about the world than they can explain via a formal system.
– Tor Norretranders, The User Illusion
You want to win the game, of course, and perhaps you want to see the game’s narrative completed.
– Steven Johnson, Everything Bad Is Good For You
I find these moments cringe-inducing, because the emotions are so raw, but also bizarrely hypnotic: these are people who have spent the last six months dreaming of a life-changing event, only to find at the last minute that they’ve fallen short.
– Steven Johnson, Everything Bad Is Good For You
This is not, incidentally, a universe of pure numbers. Emotions factor as well.
– Steven Johnson, Everything Bad Is Good For You
I have been abroad in many a black night, but never in a blacker.
– R. L. Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes
Harmony is so essential. Is there pleasure when there is a passage, there is when every room is open.
– Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons
This book is, ultimately, the story of how the kind of thinking that I was doing on my bedroom floor became an everyday component of mass entertainment.
– Steven Johnson, Everything Bad Is Good For You