Crappy old OSes have value in the basically negative sense that changing to new ones makes us wish we'd never been born.

In the case of Anathem, most of the research had to do with philosophy and metaphysics. Reading this sort of thing has never been my strong suit, so I actually had to be somewhat more "organized and results-driven" than is my habit. I just made up my mind that I was going to have to read some of these philosophy tomes, and I forced myself to read something like 10 pages a day until I had bashed my way through them.

I am on an expense account that would blow your mind.

This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.

She looked at me like I was crazy. Most of my lovers do, and that's partly why they love me, and partly why they leave

He had some measure of the infuriating trait that causes a young man to be a nonconformist for its own sake and found that the surest way to shock most people, in those days, was to believe that some kinds of behavior were bad and others good, and that it was reasonable to live one's life accordingly.

Well, all information looks like noise until you break the code.