Then he notices, he's a he again. Why not. Gender is just a slider.

Well, I don't know. It's long, it's longer than both of the other books put together, so it's more ambitious. I think I get under the skin of the people a lot more than in the other books.

When you teach your students that it's economically rational to commit crimes where the fines for misconduct are lower than the expected return on the crime, you instill a professional ethic that has no room for morals.

If surgeons don't get surgeon's block, then why are you allowed to get writer's block?

Terrorism is about magnifying one mediagenic act of violence into one hundred billion acts of terrorized authoritarian idiocy.

The big problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity.

The companies are multinational -- why should labor still stick to borders?

It's weirder and more surprising than the other books. I think there are more places where it's just more reality bending, deliberately so. I think it's a lot more emotionally raw.

My feelings towards Scott Card are pretty mixed. Politically, he and I are pretty far apart.

If you stare at someone long enough, they'll eventually look back at you.

The important thing about security systems isn't how they work, it's how they fail.

Every good thing comes to some kind of end, and then the really good things come to a beginning again.

We're going to fight this battle with everything we have, and we will probably lose. But then we will fight it again, and we will lose a little less, for this battle will win us many supporters. And then we'll lose *again*. And *again*. And we will fight on. Because as hard as it is to win by fighting, it's impossible to win by doing nothing.

Businesses are great structures for managing big projects. It's like trying to develop the ability to walk without developing a skeleton. Once in a blue moon, you get an octopus, but for the most part, you get skeletons. Skeletons are good shit.

All secrets become deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets.

He hated it when adults told him he only felt the way he did because he was young. As if being young was like being insane or drunk, like the convictions he held were hallucinations caused by a mental illness that could only be cured by waiting five years.

There is no future in which bits will be harder to copy than they are today ... Any business model that based on the idea that bits will be harder to copy is doomed.

Content isn't king. If I sent you to a desert island and gave you the choice of taking your friends or your movies, you'd choose your friends -- if you chose the movies, we'd call you a sociopath. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.

-- Here, take this. It'll give you a boost.
-- You spent 90 gold on this?
-- 90 gold is nothing when you're the baddest bitch in the virtual universe.

We don't care about what you did yesterday--we care about what you're going to do tomorrow.