Home > Author > Robin Sloan
1 " America pays defense contractors to build aircraft carriers. Google pays brilliant programmers to do whatever the hell they want. "
― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)
2 " It was a fungal party hellscape. "
― Robin Sloan , Sourdough
3 " Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines -- it's hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits. "
4 " After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time. "
5 " So I guess you could say Neel owes me a few favors, except that so many favors have passed between us now that they are no longer distinguishable as individual acts, just a bright haze of loyalty. Our friendship is a nebula. "
6 " People want things to be real. If you give them an excuse, they'll believe you. "
7 " He's like a storybook spirit, a little djinn or something, except instead of air or water his element is imagination. "
8 " Its circumference was tiny, but he had a life, and he would not give it up. "
― Robin Sloan , The Writer and the Witch
9 " Corvina must have been so different then ... really literally a different person. At what point do you make that call? At what point should you just give someone a new name? Sorry, no, you don't get to be Corvina anymore. Now you're Corvina 2.0 - a dubious upgrade. "
10 " The buzz about Google these days is that it's like America itself: still the biggest game in town, but inevitably and irrevocably on the decline. Both are superpowers with unmatched resources, but both are faced with fast-growing rivals, and both will eventually be eclipsed. For America, that rival is China. For Google, it's Facebook. (This is all from tech-gossip blogs, so take it with a grain of salt. They also say a startup called MonkeyMoney is going to be huge next year.) But here's the difference: staring down the inevitable, America pays defense contractors to build aircraft carriers. Google pays brilliant programmers to do whatever they want. "
11 " The space is appropriately shoe-boxy and all the shelves are there. I've set them up with a coordinate system, so my program can find aisle 3, shelf 13 all by itself. Simulated light from the simulated windows casts sharp-edged shadows through the simulated store. If this sounds impressive to you, you're over thirty. "
12 " To be honest, my life has exhibited many strange and sometimes troubling characteristics, but shortness is not one of them. It feels like an eternity since I started school and a techno-social epoch since I moved to San Francisco. My phone couldn't even connect to the internet back then. "
13 " She's wearing the same red and yellow BAM! T-shirt from before, which means (a) she slept in, (b) she owns several identical T-shirts, or (c) she's a cartoon character—all of which are appealing alternatives. "
14 " I'm going to put the moves on her,' he says gravely. 'Things might get weird.' He says it like a commando setting up a midnight raid. Like: Sure, this is going to be extraordinarily dangerous, but don't worry. I've done it before. "
15 " All the secrets of the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight. "
16 " The internet: always proving that you're not quite as special as you suspected. "
17 " ...I can’t stop squirming. If fidgets were Wikipedia edits, I would have completely revamped the entry on guilt by now, and translated it into five new languages. "
18 " Of course, of course. Drugs, music, a new age dawning … and you came for an old book. "
― Robin Sloan , Ajax Penumbra 1969 (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #0.5)
19 " There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care. "
20 " When every single piece of media you consume is time-shifted, does that mean it's actually you that's time-shifted? "
