I will not be what I was made, but what I make.

Hey, I saw this old British movie, all the people spoke so different, you could hardly understand them. But everyone here speaks American as good as you and me. What's with that?

People resist a census, but give them a profile page and they'll spend all day telling you who they are.

Some people would break the rules to get things done and some wouldn't; it was simple as that. John didn't have much use for the latter.

My own fault. The equipment had safeties but your primary piece of protective equipment was your brain. There was a presumption that anyone entering this room was intelligent enough to keep away from hot things, sharp things, and things carrying large stores of momentum.

Elizabeth is smart, ruthless, and emotionally damaged ... [i]f Elizabeth's brain was a person, it would have scars, tattoos, and be missing one eye.

She had been in situations like this, where people said, Convince me, and in none of those had they actually wanted to be convinced. She could lay down a perfect argument and they just invented new bullshit on the spot to justify why the answer was still no. When people said, Convince me, she knew it didn’t mean they had an open mind. It meant they had power and wanted to enjoy it a minute.