228 Quotes by Nick Harkaway

You need to relax and be yourself, not whoever it is you’re trying to be in your mad little head. I bloody don’t, though. I’m me and I’m good at it.

No. The moral of the story in so far as it has one is that cannibals can study logic, and that if you are going to leave the path, you better have your wits about you and know better than to trust the first scary old lady who talks to you in public.

Mercer,” Polly says, “we are now going to hug. As a group. The experience will be very un-English. It will be good for you. Do not speak, at all, especially not in an attempt to diffuse the emotional intensity of the situation.”They hug, somewhat awkwardly, but with great feeling.“Well,” Mercer says, after a moment, “that was certainly—”“I will hit you with a shovel,” Polly Cradle murmurs.

Perhaps there was another life, not so sad, that I missed somehow this time, and will have in another world.

Stella is a mask trying to make itself real. A bed stitching itself a quilt. I wonder if all minds build themselves autonomously out of whatever rags and bones are left lying around, and she—her original being erased or broken—is just doing what we all do, a little late renewal in her own skull.

Mind expressed as text sits quiet like a fire under moss.

Piracy is robbery with violence, often segueing into murder, rape and kidnapping. It is one of the most frightening crimes in the world. Using the same term to describe a twelve-year-old swapping music with friends, even thousands of songs, is evidence of a loss of perspective so astounding that it invites and deserves the derision it receives.

What will you tell him?""The truth."Fortismer thinks about that."Yes," he says at last. "Probably the best thing. Bloody deceptive, honesty.

The problem isn't who is in charge. It's what is in charge. The problem is that people are encouraged to function as machines. Or, actually, as mechanisms. Human emotion and sympathy are unprofessional. They are inappropriate to the exercise of reason. Everything which makes people good - makes them human - is ruled out. The system doesn't care about people, but we treat it as if it were one of us, as if it were the sum of our goods and not the product of our least admirable compromises.