Culture Commentary and Miscellaneous Musings
I felt it sometimes when biting into a slice of garden-grown cucumber marinated in balsamic or diving into the ever-cool waters of the spring, how the state mounted a threat to our joy, how the state seemed increasingly to want to destroy it, and how we, therefore, guarded the joy more steadfastly.
page 6
“Yes, I have thought about it. In fact, I’ve thought about it a great deal. And I’ve asked others about it. But I don’t know if I have an answer either. Other than this. It might not make a lot of sense, but for anything to be good, truly good, there must be love in it. I’m not even sure I know fully what that means, but the older I get, the more I believe it.
There must be love for the gift itself, love for the subject being depicted or the story being told, and love for the audience. Whether the art is sculpture, farming, teaching, lawmaking, medicine, music, or raising a child, if love is not in it — at the very heart of it —it might be skillful, marketable, or popular but I doubt it is truly good. Nothing is what it’s supposed to be if love is not at the core.
page 119, Chapter 21
“Are you kidding? The Syndicate consists of over three billion independent star systems. Every season, a new Dungeon Crawler World debuts across the net. Quintillions of citizens of the Syndicate become obsessed with the Crawl.”
page 35, Mordecai and Carl
”Wait, so this is like a TV show? Like Survivor?”
A flawless Christian woman. The manic pixie American dream girl of this nation’s deepest, darkest fantasies. The mother every woman wanted to be, and the wife every man wanted to come home to. Like a nun in a porno, it didn’t make sense, but also, by God: it worked. My name is Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.
page 4