Quotables

"I want to be old!"
"Why?"
"Cause you have more freedom!"

-- Conversation with a 16-year-old girl who lives between Israel and Hong Kong

"There's little question that America changed after September 11, 2001. The world, with all its inequities and anger, was suddenly much closer, and we no longer had the luxury of ignoring it. News became more serious and more global, and it seemed for a time that shift would become permanent. Yet, paradoxically, the past six years have also seen an explosion in superficial celebrity coverage, as if Lindsay Lohan were a morning-after pill for Iraq."

-- Smith, Sean. "Angelina Wants to Save the World." Newsweek. June 25, 2007.

"Those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it."

-- Dumbledore, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" p 575

"They didn't care that they saw it work in practice because they already knew it couldn't work in theory."

-- Clay Shirky, Supernova talk, June 2007

"And, if you knew anything about the military at all, you would know class division is a neccessity. If everyone was on an equal playing field, there would be no incentive to lead if there was no benefit (same basic problem with communism). And, also, I don't quite understand what your problem with class division is in the first place? Are you a socialist?"

-- "Bill" from the military in response to my class essay

"'Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased,' Polo said. 'Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.'"

-- Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, p. 87

"Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist."

-- Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, p. 19

"It's not that hard... you know what a tag is, right?... just start typing her name, but go slowly and then click... do you need me to do it for you?... I can login when I get home..."

(Conversation bits overheard in Barnes and Noble as a young female teen paced around trying to explain how to share photos on Facebook to her friend. It was pretty clear as the conversation continued that they shared passwords and that this type of tech support call was pretty common in their friendship.)