Nick Harkaway Quotes

• A woman who can eat a real bruschetta is a woman you can love and who can love you. Someone who pushes the thing away because it's messy is never going to cackle at you toothlessly across the living room of your retirement cottage or drag you back from your sixth heart attack by sheer furious affection. Never happen. You need a woman who isn't afraid of a faceful of olive oil for that.

  Nick Harkaway

  Retirement, Real, Love You

  Nick Harkaway (2008). “The Gone-Away World”, p.181, Random House

  39 Copy quote

• And don't tell me the end justifies the means because it doesn't. We never reach the end. All we ever get is means. That's what we live with.

  Nick Harkaway

  Life, Mean, Ends

  27 Copy quote

• I hover over the expensive Scotch and then the Armagnac, but finally settle on a glass of rich red claret. I put it near my nose and nearly pass out. It smells of old houses and aged wood and dark secrets, but also of hard, hot sunshine through ancient shutters and long, wicked afternoons in a four-poster bed. It's not a wine, it's a life, right there in the glass.

  Nick Harkaway

  Wine, Sunshine, Dark

  45 Copy quote

• The tree of nonsense is watered with error, and from its branches swing the pumpkins of disaster.

  Nick Harkaway

  Errors, Swings, Tree

  "The Gone-Away World". Book by Nick Harkaway, June 2008.

  8 Copy quote

• Piracy is robbery with violence, often segueing into murder, rape and kidnapping. It is one of the most frightening crimes in the world. Using the same term to describe a twelve-year-old swapping music with friends, even thousands of songs, is evidence of a loss of perspective so astounding that it invites and deserves the derision it receives.

  Nick Harkaway

  Song, Loss, Years

  30 Copy quote

• I love you forever. I am sorry I cannot love you now.

  Nick Harkaway

  Sorry, Love You, Forever

  6 Copy quote

• Society is based on discontent: people wanting more and more and more, being continually dissatisfied with their homes, their bodies, their decor, their clothes, everything.

  Nick Harkaway

  Home, Clothes, People

  5 Copy quote

• Law is error, you see. It's an attempt to write down a lot of things everyone ought to know anyway.

  Nick Harkaway

  Writing, Errors, Law

  Nick Harkaway (2008). “The Gone-Away World”, p.109, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• That's what you get for ignoring the beauty of Tupperware.

  Nick Harkaway

  Tupperware

  Nick Harkaway (2008). “The Gone-Away World”, p.103, Random House

  15 Copy quote

• Google says young people don't care about privacy, but when asked if they'd let their parents see their phone bills and other stuff they say no.

  Nick Harkaway

  Phones, People, Parent

  Source: www.theguardian.com

  4 Copy quote

• I have known heaven, and now I am in hell, and there are mimes.

  Nick Harkaway

  Heaven, Hell, Mime

  9 Copy quote

• Photography is without mercy--though it's nonsense to say it does not lie. Rather, it lies in a particular, capricious way which makes beggars of ministers and gods of cat's meat men.

  Nick Harkaway

  Photography, Lying, Cat

  7 Copy quote

• We need to create the institutions that will support the society we want to live in. The only answer is collective action.

  Nick Harkaway

  Support, Needs, Answers

  Source: www.theguardian.com

  7 Copy quote

• It's usually best not to ask philosophers anything, precisely because they have the habit of what in the Persian language is called sanud: the profitless consideration of unsettling yet inconsequential things.

  Nick Harkaway

  Philosopher, Language, Habit

  Nick Harkaway (2008). “The Gone-Away World”, p.380, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• The trouble with shooting people, Edie Banister now remembers, is that it's so hard to do just one.

  Nick Harkaway

  People, Shooting, Remember

  "Angelmaker". Book by Nick Harkaway, February 2, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• The problem isn't who is in charge. It's what is in charge. The problem is that people are encouraged to function as machines. Or, actually, as mechanisms. Human emotion and sympathy are unprofessional. They are inappropriate to the exercise of reason. Everything which makes people good - makes them human - is ruled out. The system doesn't care about people, but we treat it as if it were one of us, as if it were the sum of our goods and not the product of our least admirable compromises.

  Nick Harkaway

  Exercise, People, Machines

  Nick Harkaway (2008). “The Gone-away World”, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• A desire for privacy does not imply shameful secrets; Moglen argues, again and again, that without anonymity in discourse, free speech is impossible, and hence also democracy. The right to speak the truth to power does not shield the speaker from the consequences of doing so; only comparable power or anonymity can do that.

  Nick Harkaway

  Secret, Desire, Democracy

  Nick Harkaway (2012). “The Blind Giant: Being Human in a Digital World”, p.145, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• It's not that any sufficiently advanced technology is magic, it's that any technology taking place beyond the threshold of our senses is.

  Nick Harkaway

  Technology, Magic, Threshold

  4 Copy quote

• Children, bored and opinionated, are scholars of the most dogmatic stripe.

  Nick Harkaway

  Children, Bored, Stripes

  Nick Harkaway (2008). “The Gone-Away World”, p.38, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• A cherry pie is . . . ephemeral. From the moment it emerges from the oven it begins a steep decline: from too hot to edible to cold to stale to mouldy, and finally to a post-pie state where only history can tell you that it was once considered food. The pie is a parable of human life.

  Nick Harkaway

  Pie, Hot, Ephemeral

  4 Copy quote

• Never mind, never mind, let's get to the part where we smite the unrighteous. I've brought my most alarming teeth!

  Nick Harkaway

  Mind, Teeth

  4 Copy quote

• If we one day cease to exist, what will be remarkable is that we were ever here at all.

  Nick Harkaway

  One Day, Remarkable, Ifs

  Nick Harkaway (2008). “The Gone-Away World”, p.146, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• Nowhere have I ever heard of Satan taking the form of an avuncular hippie. No doubt he could. It just seems inefficient.

  Nick Harkaway

  Hippie, Doubt, Satan

  4 Copy quote

• The Brit abroad is always the voice of caution. Persons of other cultures are known to be undisciplined, prone to leaning out of car windows and cooking with garlic.

  Nick Harkaway

  Other Cultures, Voice, Car

  Nick Harkaway (2014). “Tigerman: A novel”, p.17, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• We should be worrying about if you live in the city you're more likely to have anxiety or mood disorders and to be schizophrenic. More than the problems people have from social media.

  Nick Harkaway

  Media, Cities, People

  Source: www.theguardian.com

  4 Copy quote

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