Paolo Bacigalupi - The Windup Girl (2009)

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The symbol for the Environment Ministry is the eye of a tortoise, for the long view—the understanding that nothing comes cheap or quickly without a hidden cost.

Paolo Bacigalupi
If you act like a servant, you will die like a dog.

Paolo Bacigalupi
Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way of justice.

Paolo Bacigalupi
Every time he makes plans for his future, he seems to fail. Every time he reaches forward, the world leans against him, pressing him down.

Paolo Bacigalupi
Sex and hypocrisy. They go together like coffee and cream.

Paolo Bacigalupi
All life produces waste. The act of living produces costs, hazards and disposal questions, and so the (Environment) Ministry has found itself in the center of all life, mitigating, guiding and policing the detritus of the average person along with investigating the infractions of the greedy and short-sighted, the ones who wish to make quick profits and trade on others' lives for it.

Paolo Bacigalupi
She does not know how little anyone cares to separate wheat from chaff, when all anyone wants to do is burn a field.

Paolo Bacigalupi
You're saying that you yoked the world to your patented grains and seeds, happily enslaved us all—and now you finally realize that you are dragging us all to hell.

Paolo Bacigalupi
Politics is ugly. Never doubt what small men will do for great power.

Paolo Bacigalupi
Laws are a fine thing on paper, but painful when no bribery can ease their bind.

Paolo Bacigalupi
Nature has become something new. It is ours now, truly. And if our creation devours us, how poetic will that be?

Paolo Bacigalupi
She smiles at him, too young to know him for a stranger, and too innocent yet to care.

Paolo Bacigalupi
They say in the military that a good battle plan can last as long as five minutes in real fighting. After that, it comes down to if the general is favored by fate and the spirits.

Paolo Bacigalupi
Food should come from the place of its origin, and stay there. It shouldn't spend its time crisscrossing the globe for the sake of profit. We went down that path once, and it brought us to ruin.

Paolo Bacigalupi
If you bargain when they squeeze your balls, they will only squeeze again.

Paolo Bacigalupi
Life is exponential. Two becomes four, becomes ten thousand, becomes a plague.

Paolo Bacigalupi