Birnam Wood Quotes

"Like much of small-town New Zealand, the local economy depended for the most part on the commerce of truckers and tourists passing through."

"A smart prefab would suit her fine, a cookie-cutter sort of place on a cookie-cutter sort of street."

"It was possible the property would return to the market at a later date."

"Today she could not muster pity, so as penance she compelled herself to imagine being crushed and suffocated."

"The road over the pass still wound smooth and glittering, interrupted here and there by the grey gleam of sunlight glancing off the roofs of trucks and cars."

"It was embarrassing whichever way one felt about it."

"Both parties felt disgruntled, and both received the twice-yearly Honours Lists with the same peevish cynicism."

"Rabbit warrens laid waste to good pasture; they were also an introduced species."

"The extermination of these pests was one of the few instances of common ground between conservationists and industrial farmers in New Zealand."

"In those early days, he’d skinned the carcasses himself and sold the dressed meat as pet food."

"He was a very good shot, and his two most treasured possessions, both presents from his father, were his .22 air rifle and his skinning knife."

"It annoyed her, almost as a matter of principle, that anyone of this man’s age, race, gender, wealth, and associated privilege should have used his power for good."

"She was still too much in Mira’s thrall to suspect her of any emotion so ordinary as loneliness."

"To break up with a friend was difficult enough, but she and Mira shared far more, and had committed far more, than ordinary friends."

"She would always be wrong, ill-intended, ill-prepared, and incomplete."

"Every windowsill of the tiny flat that she and Mira shared was occupied by rows and rows of seedlings."

"She had sought out Mira’s friendship with a fervour that approached infatuation."

"In the spirit of their shared affections, and to put him even further at ease, the normal Shelley might even have confided that although she shouldn’t really be the one to tell him this, for Mira, he had always been the one who got away."

"You're making it sound all cuddly and everything, but equality isn't the norm, there are power imbalances in every relationship, people are always being coerced and—"

"There's something so joyless about the left these days, so forbidding and self-denying. And policing. No one's having any fun, we're all just sitting around scolding each other for doing too much or not enough – and it's like, what kind of vision for the future is that? Where's the hope? Where's the humanity?"

"The real difficulty had come with the closure of the road over the pass. With Thorndike deserted and the barricade in place, a procession of heavy-duty vehicles out of the national park would be sure to attract attention, and the operation was far too sensitive, and worth far too much money, for Lemoine to want to wait until the road had been repaired and the viaduct rebuilt before he gave the order to his soldiers to pack out."

"It wasn't true what he had told her – that he was still learning how to fly. He’d logged over thirteen hundred flight hours in the past two years alone; the running joke at Autonomo, trotted out at every tedious toast and ribbon-cutting function he could remember, was that he didn’t trust his company’s own product, and that somehow, in all his years designing unmanned aerial systems, he had failed to grasp the meaning of ‘unmanned’."

"But what the mercenaries did not know was that their operation was being carried out without the knowledge of the New Zealand government, or the US government, or either of their militaries, or the government or the military of any country in the world. Only about a half a dozen people on the planet knew the full extent of what was happening in Korowai National Park – and every one of them answered to Lemoine."

"The real work would happen in the clean-up, after the bunker was interred. When all these vehicles left Thorndike, they would not be empty, or filled with slurry, or stacked with broken pallets or packaging or other waste. They would return to the port carrying a cargo worth not just billions, but trillions – a dollar value so enormous that Lemoine liked to put it in perspective by reminding himself, periodically, that one million days had not yet passed since the birth of Jesus Christ."

"But how many died every day in Chinese rare-earth mines and processing facilities, many of which used forced labour, and child labour, and were controlled by criminal syndicates who were themselves murderers, and gunrunners, and human traffickers, and worse? How many died downriver from all the toxic and radioactive sludge that these facilities pumped out?"

"‘Here’s the test,’ he said. ‘Here’s what you should be asking yourself. What if it was me saying, "Hey, but what about polyamory, though, that’s a great idea, guys, isn’t it?" Me, Tony? You’d be all up in my face telling me it was the most patriarchal thing you’d ever heard of, but when it’s you, all of a sudden it’s supposed to be this amazing liberation. Shouldn’t that tell you something? Shouldn’t that ring any bells, that maybe you aren’t as progressive as you think you are, that maybe there’s some other power structure at work?’"

"I’m not telling you to shut up, I’m telling you to listen. There’s a difference."

"But listen to what? Can’t you see what you’re doing? That’s not an argument!"

"You say listen, yeah, sounds great, awesome, but listen to what? You haven’t got any actual ideas."

"The food was delicious. I should have said that."

"This is all my fault. This is absolutely and entirely all my fault."

"Mass surveillance is totalitarian and oppressive."

"The billionaire class undermines solidarity by its very existence."

"Democracy isn’t about everyone voting the exact same way, it’s about whether you agree to go along with the outcome of the vote even if it turns out you’re in the minority."

"This isn’t a thought experiment where you can just take my position to its logical extreme, and that’s the point of the tutorial. This isn’t a philosophy class. This is a real, practical choice."

"It's just who you know. They just hand them out to their mates. Doesn't mean anything. It's all just a load of shit."

"Keep your money, put away your little coins; I give you electricity for free."

"I think we're being pretty clear. I've been researching your collective, I'm intrigued."

"It was all so easy. I just took what I wanted, and it was mine."

"Everyone can't be on top, or it wouldn't be the top any more, would it?"

"Because I take a long position on the sharing economy, and I've never seen an organisation quite like yours before."

"That's going to be my back fence; I don't want drones over my back fence."

"I guess you seem like the kind of person who'd have a secret agenda."

"It's about keeping control of the narrative."

"We deserve this, Jill. Both of us. We really do."

"What thrilled him was the sense that he alone could understand himself."

"He loved to wonder at his own motivations, to marvel at his own eccentric mind."

"His goal had been to become so ambidextrous when it came to action and reaction, move and countermove."

"Despite two unauthorized biographies... no one had ever discovered what it was."

"He had lost all appetite for playing with a living partner."

"It was one of his deepest satisfactions that, despite constant media speculation, no one had ever discovered his secret."

"Everything about him, a single eight-week period in his very early adolescence had forged, in every way, the man that he’d become."

"He was determined never to reveal what his mother had told him."

"He was risking his life for his investigation."

"He saw himself on stage, at a podium, collecting an award."

"There comes a point where we all have to choose between what is wrong and what is hard."

"Even a fucking acid trip has to be about team-building."

"She was inextricable from him, and he from her."

"Why would he go up there at night? There’d be nothing to see."

"We can’t bring this man back to life. We can’t change the fact he’s dead."

"This is our fault. A man is dead because of us, Mira."

"We can’t change the fact he’s dead. But we can change what happens next."

"I’ve got to be honest with you. I don’t do funerals."

"Money is not an issue for me. So, if there’s any equipment that you need, any backup, anybody I could speak with, anything at all to make your jobs easier in any way, please, let me know."

"He felt strangely calm. The SUVs were nosing forward, ready to pursue. He could see nothing behind the tinted glass."

"Tony touched the roll of film in his pocket for luck."

"Mira wondered now if Lemoine had something of that kind."

"Anyone can garden. It’s just a few basic principles and time."

"She hadn’t asked to charge her phone since the day that they arrived."

"‘Goodnight,’ Mira said. Shelley took the mug into her bedroom and closed the door."

"She was positive that Mira would only have to glance at her to know exactly what had happened."

"Don’t worry about that. The main thing is that you don’t need to worry."

"I’m telling you the truth. I swear to God."

"Yes, he would lose a lot of money in the process – but that was better than losing every cent."

"Lemoine didn’t like messy. He didn’t like multiple. He liked single, he liked swift, and he liked clean."

"Because he’s dangerous, and he wants to kill me."

"This manifesto makes it very clear that Tony Gallo thinks that I should not exist."

"People don’t run if they’ve got nothing to hide."

"This is a serious situation, Mira. I have the best security on the planet."

"‘I’d rather pay a fine than a fee,’ Lemoine had said to Shelley."

"It was the possibility of everything. Our whole lives. And our ideas, and the future, and the whole world."

"You can take your time. Wait until he turns to look at you, then imagine there’s an X in the middle of his forehead, and shoot for the middle of the X."

"‘Breathe out before you shoot,’ Lady Darvish heard Sir Owen say. ‘At the bottom of the breath you’re steadier than at the top.’"

"I am fulfilling an entirely legitimate contract in the full knowledge of all the Five Eyes governments, including yours."

"You have put me in a very difficult position. I can’t let you go, because you pose an active threat to my personal safety."

"All the confusion and second-guessing doubt that had brought her to the farm was gone. Someone was in trouble. Someone needed to be saved."

"He didn’t stop. He kept moving till he reached the border of the national park, then he climbed the fence and dropped down into the service road."