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" I know that when I talk to my parents and my friends, there's a strong feeling of the world out of control and damaged. "
Nick Harkaway
Strong
Friends
Control
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" My reading of history is that we continually inherit trouble. "
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Inherit
Trouble
" Being a parent is weird. It changes people in subtle and unsubtle ways. In my case, it awoke a kind of manic sentinel in my brain. Anything in the house that might be a threat to the kids or to my wife gets terminated - food, sharp edges, poor wiring. "
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" If you ask who I aspire to, well, if a single line of mine was as funny as P. G. Wodehouse can be, that would be great. "
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Funny
Great
Line
" Prize lists are out, and you're not on them? Nature of the world - means nothing. Prizes are a lottery. "
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Lottery
" The First World War was a horror of gas, industrialised slaughter, fear, and appalling human suffering. "
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Suffering
World
Fear
" We tend to assume that data is either private or public, either owned by one person or shared by many. In fact there's more to it than that, above and beyond the upsetting reality that private data is now anything but. "
Nick Harkaway
Now
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Person
" Suddenly, the idea of writing a book was like coming home. I didn't tell anyone except my wife, Clare. I just began. "
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Book
Writing
Wife
" Names aren't just coathooks, they're coats. They're the first thing anyone knows about you. "
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First
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" With true free speech has to come an understanding of when and when not to use it. But you can't legislate that. It must be voluntary - especially in a world where a whisper can reach a million people in an eye blink. "
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Free
Eye
World
" Steampunk appeals to the idea of uniqueness, to the one-off item, while every mainstream consumer technology of recent years is about putting human beings into ever more granular, packageable and mass-produced identities so that they can be sold or sold to, perfectly mapped and understood. "
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Human
Technology
More
" An important part of the Internet is that it provides a space for people whose identities are socially unacceptable. If it enables someone who feels minoritised to be who they want to be, it's actually worth having other people be offensive. I'd much rather have both than have neither. "
Nick Harkaway
Want
Important
Internet
" My wife runs the charity Reprieve, and so rendition, droning, and capital punishment are very much the topics of our dinner table because of that. "
Nick Harkaway
Punishment
Wife
Table
" Happiness is boundlessly weird. Other people's choices often seem to delight them, where I would run screaming. "
Nick Harkaway
People
Choices
Happiness
" I studied revolutions at university, and I think each revolution must begin with a moment of 'no.' If enough people have that moment at the same time, it becomes a movement. "
Nick Harkaway
Think
Time
Moment
" I read my father's books growing up. I thought then and I still think now that his writing is wonderful. It delights and infuriates me in equal measure that he's still that good. "
Nick Harkaway
Good
Father
Writing
" I'm fascinated by human agency - by the process of decision, both in the individual and the mass. "
Nick Harkaway
Decision
Process
Individual
" Sir Terry Pratchett - he was knighted in 2009, and on him it looked earned rather than entitled - wrote about dragons, wizards, turtles, witches, time-travelling monks, and suitcases with legs. "
Nick Harkaway
Legs
Witches
Dragons
" Margaret Thatcher inherited a country in transition. The British Empire was still a considerable entity well into the 20th century. "
Nick Harkaway
Well
Still
Empire
" I grew up on the Roger Moore and Sean Connery Bond movies, so the DNA of my spies is extremely ridiculous and goofy. "
Nick Harkaway
DNA
Bond
Up
" There is not now, nor I suspect will there ever be, a le Carre novel with ninjas in it. Most serious novelists are wary of including ninjas in their writing. That's a shame, because many much-admired works of modern fiction could benefit from a few. "
Nick Harkaway
Writing
Most
Now
" An enormous amount of a writer's life is performance. I find myself wondering, at the moment, whether I do too much of it. "
Nick Harkaway
Myself
Life
Performance
" Google's library plan was staggering and exciting - it wasn't the idea I objected to, but the method. "
Nick Harkaway
Google
Exciting
Idea
" My scientific qualifications are relatively scant. I like science. I try really hard to educate myself about it, but in the end, if something has to go 'boom,' and it would probably only go 'fwoosh,' I am relatively unconcerned about that, which is a sin, but not, I think, a grave one. "
Nick Harkaway
Sin
Myself
Science
" In a social context, digital technology introduces you to neighbours of the mind - people who are separated by distance, but close to you in thought and interest. "
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You
Thought
" My dad and I compete on the pool table; that's the most important competition of our lives. The fact that I'm writing and it works for me is one of the great joys for him. We talk about writing, and it's great. "
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Me
Pool
Competition
" In the aftermath of September 11, you can't - as Tony Blair was so fond of suggesting - draw a line under historical events. They don't go away. They come back. "
Nick Harkaway
Line
You
Go
" I'm caught somewhere between introversion and extroversion. Performance is natural to me, joyful, but it is also exhausting. I can feed on it, but the expense is high, too, like being a carnivore: I have to chase down my meals. "
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Down
Me
Natural
" The mainstream of literary culture in the U.K. is very averse to writing about technology. "
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Culture
Writing
Technology
" I don't do a lot of research, exactly, but I'm constantly wandering through the world finding things incredible and remembering them. "
Nick Harkaway
Remembering
Research
World
" Peace is not a state - it is a choice, and you have to remake it every day. It's possible to get a sort of stability, a habit of peace, but it's like an egg balanced, spinning, on its point: lose your momentum, and your equilibrium is gone, too. "
Nick Harkaway
Day
Habit
Momentum