5
" You turn the book over in your hands, you scan the sentences on the back of the jacket, generic phrases that don't say a great deal. So much the better, there is no message that indiscreetly outshouts the message that the book itself must communicate directly, that you must extract from the book, however much or little it may be. Of course, this circling of the book, too, this reading around it before reading inside it, is a part of the pleasure in a new book, but like all preliminary pleasures, it has its optimal duration if you want it to serve as a thrust toward the more substantial pleasure of the consummation of the act, namely the reading of the book. "
― Italo Calvino , If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
12
" I was greeted by the Ulmers’ eleven-year-old daughter, a girl of remarkable poise. Mrs. Ulmer was busily typing a manuscript that needed to make the evening mail and after welcoming me, in a very friendly manner, she returned to work. There were two other children and Mr. Ulmer, who was writing the manuscript just as his wife was typing it. The youngest child, who could have been no more than five or six, had the task of relaying the handwritten pages from his father to his eldest sister, who would quickly scan them for errors, and from her to his mother. The middle child, a little girl of seven or eight, lay on the floor with a large dictionary and would look up words when called upon by her parents or sister. "
― Robert Bruce Stewart , The Birth of M.E. Meegs (Emmie Reese Mysteries, #1)
18
" Pretty soon all of us will be issued with hand scanners. That way when we met another person, whether we know them or not we can scan their ID cards. That way we will know whether to smile, frown, grimace, talk, walk away, laugh, shake their hand, give them a kiss, have a coffee with them, invite them over to your house, do business with them, have sex, go to a football game, have drinks or dinner together. I'm glad that our lives are getting so organized for us, because I would have to hate to make my own decisions concerning my own life. "
