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Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1) QUOTES

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1) QUOTES

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 " Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines -- it's hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

3 " 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. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

4 " 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. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

5 " People want things to be real. If you give them an excuse, they'll believe you. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

6 " He's like a storybook spirit, a little djinn or something, except instead of air or water his element is imagination. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

7 " 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. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

8 " 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. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

9 " 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. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

10 " 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. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

11 " 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. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

12 " 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. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

13 " All the secrets of the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

14 " ...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. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

15 " There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

16 " When every single piece of media you consume is time-shifted, does that mean it's actually you that's time-shifted? "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

17 " What if, you know—what if hanging out with Griffo Gerritszoon wasn’t always that great? What if he was weird and dreamy? What if the best part of him was the shapes he could make with metal? That part of him really is immortal. It’s as immortal as anything’s going to get. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

18 " I always thought the key to immortality would be, like, tiny robots fixing things in your brain,” she says. “Not books. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

19 " The nature of immortality is a mystery,' he says, speaking so softly that we have to lean closer to hear.' But everything I know of writing and reading tells me that this is true. I have felt it in these shelves and in others. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

20 " A fellowship of secret scholars spent five hundred years on this task. Now we're penciling it in for a Friday morning. "

― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)