Robin Sloan Quotes

America pays defense contractors to build aircraft carriers. Google pays brilliant programmers to do whatever the hell they want.

~ Robin Sloan

It was a fungal party hellscape.

~ Robin Sloan

Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines -- it's hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits.

~ Robin Sloan

After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.

~ Robin Sloan

So I guess you could say Neel owes me a few favors, except that so many favors have passed between us now that they are no longer distinguishable as individual acts, just a bright haze of loyalty. Our friendship is a nebula.

~ Robin Sloan

People want things to be real. If you give them an excuse, they'll believe you.

~ Robin Sloan

It was tall, made of pale blue light, a creature with long arms and long legs and the shadow of a smile, and above it all, eyes that shone bluer still than its body. What do you seek in this place? the shade asked plainly.

~ Robin Sloan

He's like a storybook spirit, a little djinn or something, except instead of air or water his element is imagination.

~ Robin Sloan

Have you ever played Maximum Happy Imagination?Sounds like a Japanese game show.Kat straightens her shoulders. Okay, we're going to play. To start, imagine the future. The good future. No nuclear bombs. Pretend you're a science fiction writer.Okay: World government... no cancer... hover-boards.Go further. What's the good future after that?Spaceships. Party on Mars.Further.Star Trek. Transporters. You can go anywhere.Further.I pause a moment, then realize: I can't.Kat shakes her head. It's really hard. And that's, what, a thousand years? What comes after that? What could possibly come after that? Imagination runs out. But it makes sense, right? We probably just imagine things based on what we already know, and we run out of analogies in the thirty-first century.

~ Robin Sloan

Its circumference was tiny, but he had a life, and he would not give it up.

~ Robin Sloan

Corvina must have been so different then ... really literally a different person. At what point do you make that call? At what point should you just give someone a new name? Sorry, no, you don't get to be Corvina anymore. Now you're Corvina 2.0 - a dubious upgrade.

~ Robin Sloan

The buzz about Google these days is that it's like America itself: still the biggest game in town, but inevitably and irrevocably on the decline. Both are superpowers with unmatched resources, but both are faced with fast-growing rivals, and both will eventually be eclipsed. For America, that rival is China. For Google, it's Facebook. (This is all from tech-gossip blogs, so take it with a grain of salt. They also say a startup called MonkeyMoney is going to be huge next year.) But here's the difference: staring down the inevitable, America pays defense contractors to build aircraft carriers. Google pays brilliant programmers to do whatever they want.

~ Robin Sloan

The space is appropriately shoe-boxy and all the shelves are there. I've set them up with a coordinate system, so my program can find aisle 3, shelf 13 all by itself. Simulated light from the simulated windows casts sharp-edged shadows through the simulated store. If this sounds impressive to you, you're over thirty.

~ Robin Sloan

To be honest, my life has exhibited many strange and sometimes troubling characteristics, but shortness is not one of them. It feels like an eternity since I started school and a techno-social epoch since I moved to San Francisco. My phone couldn't even connect to the internet back then.

~ Robin Sloan

She's wearing the same red and yellow BAM! T-shirt from before, which means (a) she slept in, (b) she owns several identical T-shirts, or (c) she's a cartoon character—all of which are appealing alternatives.

~ Robin Sloan

I'm going to put the moves on her,' he says gravely. 'Things might get weird.' He says it like a commando setting up a midnight raid. Like: Sure, this is going to be extraordinarily dangerous, but don't worry. I've done it before.

~ Robin Sloan

All the secrets of the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight.

~ Robin Sloan

The internet: always proving that you're not quite as special as you suspected.

~ Robin Sloan

...I can’t stop squirming. If fidgets were Wikipedia edits, I would have completely revamped the entry on guilt by now, and translated it into five new languages.

~ Robin Sloan

Of course, of course. Drugs, music, a new age dawning … and you came for an old book.

~ Robin Sloan

There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care.

~ Robin Sloan

When every single piece of media you consume is time-shifted, does that mean it's actually you that's time-shifted?

~ Robin Sloan

What if, you know—what if hanging out with Griffo Gerritszoon wasn’t always that great? What if he was weird and dreamy? What if the best part of him was the shapes he could make with metal? That part of him really is immortal. It’s as immortal as anything’s going to get.

~ Robin Sloan

Now, for the first time in my life, I empathize 100 percent with Fluff McFly. My heart is beating at hamster-speed and I am throwing my eyes around the room, looking for some way out.

~ Robin Sloan

I always thought the key to immortality would be, like, tiny robots fixing things in your brain,” she says. “Not books.

~ Robin Sloan

The nature of immortality is a mystery,' he says, speaking so softly that we have to lean closer to hear.' But everything I know of writing and reading tells me that this is true. I have felt it in these shelves and in others.

~ Robin Sloan

A fellowship of secret scholars spent five hundred years on this task. Now we're penciling it in for a Friday morning.

~ Robin Sloan