“ To recap: it is possible to put decent information into a Government Machine, have ordinary, good people running the thing, and a reasonable system in place, and still get utter idiocy out of the disp… Nick Harkaway
“ I grew up on the Roger Moore and Sean Connery Bond movies, so the DNA of my spies is extremely ridiculous and goofy. Nick Harkaway
“ Peace is not a state - it is a choice, and you have to remake it every day. It's possible to get a sort of stability, a habit of peace, but it's like an egg balanced, spinning, on its point: lose your… Nick Harkaway
“ 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
“ The sergeants are shunted forward and they blink and stare up at Gonzo as he leans on the edge of his giant mixing bowl. MacArthur never addressed his troops from a mixing bowl--not even one made from… Nick Harkaway
“ Amazon is a corporation, not a philanthropic trust dedicated to the production of works of art and literature. Nick Harkaway
“ I do public appearances. I'm bluff, hearty, goofy. I wear loud clothes, and I read the funny bits. I occasionally get taken to task for one thing or another, and I acknowledge my fault, my flaw, my fa… Nick Harkaway
“ Steampunk appeals to the idea of uniqueness, to the one-off item, while every mainstream consumer technology of recent years is about putting human beings into ever more granular, packageable and mass… Nick Harkaway
“ Executive power in any nation arguably has more in common with executive power in another country than with the citizens it should serve. Nick Harkaway
“ The reason steampunk attracts people is that it is premised on a technology which is visible and pleasing to the naked eye, and whose moving parts are comprehensible on a human scale. Nick Harkaway
“ The idea that the law should punish what is rude; that government should protect our tender sensibilities from those who would - quite often with shallow motivations but sometimes with deeper and more… Nick Harkaway
“ We are bodies which think, and we're at home with steampunk because it is an ethos of design and creativity which acknowledges the humanly physical: that which we can understand with our fingers. Nick Harkaway
“ At the heart of both democracy and capitalism is a simple assumption that, across the board, people make free and relatively rational decisions: that we are, to borrow a medical term, Gillick Competen… Nick Harkaway
“ In abandoning the understanding that things - services, goods, wars, and houses - have costs, we risk becoming infantilised, incapable of making decisions about government or finance, and perhaps abov… Nick Harkaway
“ Gonzo stares after the Rolls-Royce. He has heroismus interruptus. He was ready, right then, to coordinate four or five hundred terrified civvies, lay down his life, kill for them, make a legend of dis… Nick Harkaway
“ You've picked up a rummy habit, James Banister said cordially as they approached one another. Sort of a crouch. You look a bit... well, I'm sorry, but you look a bit Victor Hugo, if you catch my drift… Nick Harkaway
“ Destiny' is the state of perfect mechanical causation in which everything is the consequence of everything else. If choice is an illusion, what's life? Consciousness without volition. We'd all be pass… Nick Harkaway
“ Nature intended in her design a hearty life of toil, open fires and plump old age attended by a brood of sun-touched brats. Nick Harkaway
“ Joshua Joseph has no real hatred of modern technology - he just mistrusts the effortless, textureless surfaces, and the ease with which it trains you to do things in the way most convenient to the mac… Nick Harkaway
