180 Quotes by G. Willow Wilson

There’s always that one group of people who think they have special permission to terrorize anybody who disagrees with them. And then everybody who looks like them suffers.

How weak your little fleshy hands are. Have you ever done anything with them but type and fondle yourself?

They will wake up one morning and realize their civilization has been pulled out from under them, inch by inch, dollar by dollar, just as ours was. They will know what it is to have been asleep for the most important century of their history.

Society didn’t mind if you broke the rules; it only required you to acknowledge them.

They had no idea what it was like to live in a place that boasted one of the most sophisticated digital policing systems in the world, but no proper mail service. Emirates with princes in silver-plated cars and districts with no running water. An Internet where every blog, every chat room, every forum is monitored for illegal expressions of distress and discontent.

He was impotent, here as in the outside world, his utility confined to punching commands into computers. Beyond the bedroom where he sat day after day like an idle spider in the midst of a digital Web he was boneless, protected only by a black carapace of T-shirts and jeans, unprepared for physical danger. His mind struggled against the limits of his body.

Fear can make anything real,” said Vikram. “The black-cloaks are afraid you’re a sorcerer. If they condemn you as a sorcerer and burn you for it, then you are, for all practical purposes, a sorcerer, whether you began as one or not. Fear doesn’t need to make sense in order to have consequences.

There’s this ayah from the Quran that my dad always quotes when he sees something bad on TV. A fire or a flood or a bombing. “Whoever kills one person, it is as if he has killed all of mankind... And whoever saves one person, it is as if he has saved all of mankind.” When I was a little kid, that always made me feel better. Because no matter how bad things get there are always people who rush in to help. And according to my dad they are blessed.

These are not the banu adam you’re looking for.