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Blackfish City QUOTES

Blackfish City QUOTES

1 " We want villains. We look for them everywhere. People to pin our misfortunate on. Whose sins and flaws are responsible for all the suffering we see. We want a world where the real monstrosity lies in wicked individuals. Instead of being a fundamental facet of human society, of the human heart.

Stories prime us to search for villains. Because villains can be punished. Villains can be stopped.

But villains are oversimplifications. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

2 " Fine line between good business and a fucking war crime,” he said. “Ain’t that the goddamn epitaph of capitalism. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

3 " Stories are where we find ourselves, where we find the others who are like us. Gather enough stories and soon you're not alone; you are an army. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

4 " Money is a mind, the oldest artificial intelligence. Its prime directives are simple, its programming endlessly creative. Humans obey it unthinkingly, with cheerful alacrity. Like a virus, it doesn't care if it kills its host. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

5 " Slums are always a marvel; how human desperation can seem to warp the very laws of physics. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

6 " When had he become adult enough to give into childish joy? "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

7 " Every city is a war. A thousand fights being fought between a hundred groups. Rich, poor, old, young, born-here, and not-born-here. The followers of this god and the followers of that one. Someone will have the upper hand in each of these battles. Those people will make the rules, whether they're administered by priests or soldiers or politicians or programs. Fixing this is hard. Put new people in power, write new laws, erase old ones, build cities out of nothingness - but the wars remain, the underlying conflicts are unaffected. Only power shifts the scales, and people build power only when they come together. When they find in each other the strength to stop being afraid "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

8 " When the worst thing that can possibly happen to you finally happens, you find that you are not afraid of anything. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

9 " The poor woman. She couldn’t help what she was. It took a special sort of insanity to run for public office. A fragile megalomania; a delusional ego. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

10 " dissolution syndrome (IDS) or multiplicative affiliation disorder (MAD)? Epidemics do not have medical causes; they have social ones. I have been stitching its story together here. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

11 " The lack of imagination among the rich was its own kind of machine, its own species of artificial intelligence. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

12 " Everyone can afford to be nice to each other, when no one is trying to exterminate anybody. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

13 " And anyway, lots of things had never been done before, and then they were done. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

14 " America has fallen and I don't feel so good myself. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

15 " Soq was beyond gender. They put it on like most people put on clothes. Some days butch and some days queen, but always Soq, always the same and always uncircumscribable underneath it all. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

16 " How can we who have nothing but the immense magnificent tiny powerless spark of our own singular Self harness that energy, magnify it, make it into something that can stand beside these invisible giants, these artificial intelligences, weighty legal words on parchment and the glimmering ones and zeros of code in a processor somewhere? "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

17 " The narratives of fear, of lies, of They Want to Destroy Us. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

18 " I’ve taken everything from you and now I’m going to tell you it’s your neighbor’s fault because he looks different from you. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

19 " You are new here. It is overwhelming, terrifying. Don’t be afraid. Shut your eyes. I’m here. Pinch your nose shut. Its smell is not the smell of your city. You can listen, because every city sounds like chaos. You will even hear your language, if you listen long enough. There is no map here. No map is needed. No manual. Only stories. Which is why I’m here. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City

20 " Money is a mind, the oldest artificial intelligence. Its prime directives are simple, its programming endlessly creative. Humans obey it unthinkingly, with cheerful alacrity. Like a virus, it doesn’t care if it kills its host. It will simply flow on to someone new, to control them as well. "

― Sam J. Miller , Blackfish City