Quotes From "The Goneaway World" By 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 a spare geodesic radio emplacement shell--and certainly de Gaulle never did. But Gonzo Lubitsch does, and he does it as if a whole long line of commanders were standing at his shoulder, urging h Nick Harkaway

Newton's work on gravity led to the discovery of the Lagrange point, a place where opposing forces cancel one another out, and a body may remain at relative rest. This is where I am right now; the forces in my life confound one another. Better, for the moment, to be here and now, without history or future. Nick Harkaway

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

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

Gonzo's father told his son to grieve without reservation or embarrassment until he could grieve solemnly and inwardly, and then finally to hang up his tears and wear them only occasionally, as befits the true men of the heart. Grief is not a thing to be ashamed of or suppressed, he told Gonzo. Nor yet is it a thing to cherish. Feel it, inhabit it and leave it behind. It is right, but it is not the end. Nick Harkaway

Now, are those engaged in the business of governing any different by nature from those they govern?"" Yes. They're prideful and tend to sexual misconduct. Also, the situation of being in government tends to drive you mad."" But are they more virtuous or more intelligent? Or more compassionate?"" Ha! "" Let's call that one a 'no. Nick Harkaway

No. The moral of the story in so far as it has one is that cannibals can study logic, and that if you are going to leave the path, you better have your wits about you and know better than to trust the first scary old lady who talks to you in public. Nick Harkaway

What will you tell him?"" The truth." Fortismer thinks about that." Yes, " he says at last. "Probably the best thing. Bloody deceptive, honesty. Nick Harkaway

This place does not feel like my country. It feels like countries I have read about where things are very bad. It feels, in fact, like exactly the kind of thing we were protesting against, but we thought it was elsewhere. It is not heartening to find that it has come to us. Nick Harkaway

Garbage in, garbage out. Or rather more felicitously: the tree of nonsense is watered with error, and from its branches swing the pumpkins of disaster. Nick Harkaway

You end up with a machine which knows that by its mildest estimate it must have terrible enemies all around and within it, but it can't find them. It therefore deduces that they are well-concealed and expert, likely professional agitators and terrorists. Thus, more stringent and probing methods are called for. Those who transgress in the slightest, or of whom even small suspicions are harboured, must be treated as terrible foes. A lot of rather ordinary people will get repeatedly investigated with increasing severity until the Government Machine either finds enemies or someone very high up indeed personally turns the tide.. And these people under the microscope are in fact just taking up space in the machine's numerical model. In short, innocent people are treated as hellish fiends of ingenuity and bile because there's a gap in the numbers. . Nick Harkaway

Are you addicted if there is simply no reason for you to do anything else? Nick Harkaway

This is the gift of focus, or wilful denial, and it is something boys are particularly good at. Girls–at least where I grew up–tend to be more emotionally balanced and sane, and therefore find the kind of all-excluding concentration you need to care about dinosaurs, taxonomy, philately and geopolitical schemes a bit worrying and sad. Girls can grasp the bigger picture (i.e., it might be better not to destroy the world over this), where boys have a perfect grip on the fine print (i.e., this insidious idea is antithetical to our existence and cannot be allowed to flourish alongside our peace-loving, free society). Note carefully how it is probably better to let the girls deal with weapons of mass destruction. . Nick Harkaway

Because for Gonzo, anything which may explode at any moment is clearly a girl. Nick Harkaway

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