Max Barry Quotes & Sayings

What we're doing, or, I should say, what you're doing, since no one has taught me any good words, is dropping recipes into people's brains to cause a neurochemical reaction to knock out the filters. Tie them up just long enough to slip an instruction past. And you do that by speaking a string of words crafted for the person's psychographic segment. Probably words that were crafted decades ago and have been strengthened ever since. And it's a string of words because the brain has layers of defenses, and for the instruction to get through, they all have to be disabled at once.'
Jeremy said, 'How do you know this?'
'Do you think I'm smart?'
'I think you're scary,' he said. — Max Barry

Last month we had to sit through a presentation on eliminating redundancy, and it was a bunch of Power Point slides, plus a guy reading out what was on the slides, and then he gave us all hard copies. I don't understand these things. — Max Barry

I hadn't known this about love: that you did not need to deserve it. I thought there was a set of criteria, like a good sense of humor and looks and wealth. You could compensate deficiencies in one area with excellence in another, hence rich, ugly men with beautiful wives. But there was an algorithm involved. That was why I thought I was unloved: I didn't score highly enough. I had made some attempts to improve my score and also told myself I didn't care because that was what women wanted, something fake and temporary, I would rather be alone. And sometimes I was just lazy and would rather code things. But here I was soaking in a bath of my own filth with Lola scrubbing my shoulders, and what algorithm could explain that? That problem was nonhalting. — Max Barry

Words aren't just sounds or shapes. They're meaning. That's what language is: a protocol for transferring meaning. When you learn English, you train your brain to react in a particular way to particular sounds. As it turns out, the protocol can be hacked. — Max Barry

Stop believing what you want to believe. It's unbecoming — Max Barry

Did you tell me to loosen up?" He wiggled the wrench onto the third nut. "Is that funny for some reason?" "When I experience base physiological needs for food, water, air, sleep, and sex, I follow protocols in order to satisfy them without experiencing desire. Yes, it's funny." "You fucking what?" "It's required to maintain a defense against compromise. Desire is weakness. I'm sure I explained this." "Well, that sounds awesome. That sounds like a terrific life you have there, Eliot. — Max Barry

I read once that you need two things to be happy: any two of health, money, and love. You can cover the absense of one with the other two ... But now I realized this was unmitigated bullshit, because health and money did not compare with love at all. — Max Barry

Attention words. A single word wasn't enough. Not even for a particular segment. The brain had defenses, filters evolved over millions of years to protect against manipulation. The first was perception, the process of funneling an ocean of sensory input down to a few key data packages worthy of study by the cerebral cortex. When data got by the perception filter, it received attention. And she saw now that it must be like that all the way down: There must be words to attack each filter. Attention words and then maybe desire words and logic words and urgency words and command words. This was what they were teaching her. How to craft a string of words that would disable the filters one by one, unlocking each mental tumbler until the mind's last door swung open. — Max Barry

He shook his head to clear it, but the world grew dark and angry and would not stay upright. The world did not like to be shaken. He understood that now. He wouldn't shake it again. He felt his feet sliding away from him on silent roller skates and reached for a wall for support. The wall cursed and dug its fingers into his arm, and was probably not a wall. It was probably a person. — Max Barry

He'd never seen it in person before (the main quarry); it was larger than he'd expected. When he'd first taken an interest, some decades before, following hints of something ancient and significant buried there, he could still make out remnants of the hill that had loaned the town it's name. Now that was gone - not just erased but inverted, to become a great pit. He found tho notable for the demonstration of force it represented. Civilizations rose and fell; what caused them to be remembered was not their contribution to knowledge or culture, not even the size of their empires, but rather how much force they extorted upon the landscape. This was what survived them. — Max Barry

Some people would break the rules to get things done and some wouldn't; it was simple as that. John didn't have much use for the latter. — Max Barry

There's no requirement that jobs be meaningful. If there was, half the country would be unemployed. — Max Barry

Of course, human tissue completely It's unlikely that scar was composed of the same molecules. Do you think it is really appropriate to consider people to be the same entity they were seven years earlier? Because, physically, they're not. They're connected but every part has changed. Like a renovated house. It seems like after seven years you should not be liable for things you did before. Why should a man be imprisoned for a crime committed by a different physical entity? Should we expect a couple to stay married when they barely share a molecule with the people who said 'I do'? I don't think so. — Max Barry

A woman appeared and began to generate tea and coffee — Max Barry

Companies were getting a lot tougher on labor contracts these days; Hack had heard stories. At Adidas, if you quit your job and your replacement wasn't as competent, they sued you for lost profits. — Max Barry

By this action, the Government has proved that so long as it exists, none of us are truly free. Government and freedom are mutually exclusive. So if we value freedom, there's only one conclusion. It's time to get rid of this leftover relic we call Government. — Max Barry

That's the thing you learn about values: they're what people make up to justify what they did. — Max Barry

Within perfect walls there is nothing worth protecting.
There is, in fact, nothing.
And so we exchange privacy for intimacy. — Max Barry

It was pointless to ponder who I was because I was whichever combination of chemicals happened to be sloshing around at that time. So I decided not to search for a true self. I decided to choose who I wanted to be. — Max Barry

Well, I like to know where I'm going before I try to get there. It's a mistake to try to execute a plan before you've thought of one, in my experience. — Max Barry

This isn't an accident; this happens because to people at the top, the scariest thing is how many people there are below. They need to watch us. They need to monitor what we're thinking. It's the only thing between them and a guillotine. — Max Barry

She decided to sleep with him and get it over with. It was the only way. He had become an annoying jingle, striking in the shower, or at work, or just as she was falling asleep. She had to at least kiss him deeply and completely, in a way that left nothing behind. So she could move on. So she could stop imagining it. She couldn't keep losing herself to the jingle. It was impairing her ability to function. — Max Barry

Body parts telegraphed complaints from faraway places. — Max Barry

It is a building designed by committee: all they have been able to agree on is that it should be rectangular, have windows, and not fall over. — Max Barry

I remember when you could always rely on those little street kids to pop a few people for the latest Nikes," Vice-President John said. "Now people get mugged for Reeboks, for Adidas - for generics, for Christ's sake. — Max Barry

I'm not a privacy nut, and I don't care that much if these organizations want to know where I go and what I buy. But what bothers me is how HARD they're all working for that data, how much money they're spending, and how they never admit that's what they want. It means that information must be really valuable for some reason, and I just wonder to who and why. — Max Barry

Wil ate without enthusiasm. His bacon tasted like nothing. Like a dead animal, fried. His eggs, aborted chickens. — Max Barry

He went to rub his eyes and missed. — Max Barry

When someone thinks, "I liked his last book, I'll hope this new one is good" and shells out their hard-earned, I fervently want that person to be thrilled. — Max Barry

A panic state is not helpful to good decision making. — Max Barry

Apparently we're now in a state where most ads are full of people looking at us in a way that would heat us up down to our toes if it happened in real life, and we don't think anything of it. — Max Barry

I'm Australian; I know how to use a shotgun! — Max Barry

I had to train myself to accept that not everybody works as hard as me. That what I consider unacceptably sloppy is actually an okay result, and it's counterproductive to get into a whole thing where someone starts crying and threatening to quit. And you know what? Learning that not only helped me grow as a manager. It helped me grow as a person. — Max Barry

Kikkhf fkattkx hfkixu zttkcu," she said. — Max Barry

With Lola, everything was solvable. She was my independent variable. — Max Barry

You went to school," Lee said. "I mean, at some point. And it didn't suit you very well. They wanted to teach you things you didn't care about. Dates and math and trivia about dead presidents. They didn't teach persuasion. Your ability to persuade is the single most important determinant of your quality of life, and they didn't cover that at all. Well, we do. And we're looking for students with natural aptitude. — Max Barry

I tended to be skeptical of anything that couldn't be measured, written down, and independently verified across a series of double-blind tests. But this was hard data. Lola's heart beat fastest for me. — Max Barry

He strode briskly away, to do whatever it was the managers did. Have meetings, I guess. Make phone calls. It was hard for us on the technical side to understand why the company required so many managers. Engineers built things. Salespeople sold things. Even Human Resources I could understand, kind of. But managers proliferated despite performing very few identifiable functions. — Max Barry

To succeed in sales, you need skills - not skills entirely consistent with moral integrity and emotional well-being, but skills nevertheless. — Max Barry

It was always this way: The more people talked, the more they obscured. You didn't need to argue for the truth. You could see it. — Max Barry

Hey, I saw this old British movie, all the people spoke so different, you could hardly understand them. But everyone here speaks American as good as you and me. What's with that? — Max Barry

I don't play the lottery. I don't care what my horoscope says. I think most things about the world could be improved if people thought more about what they're doing. When someone gets upset with their computer, I tend to side with the computer. I think art is overrated, and bridges are underrated. In fact, I don't understand why bridges aren't art. It seems to me they're penalized for having a use. If I make a bridge that ends in midair, that's a sculpture. But put it between two landmasses and let it ferry two hundred thousand cars per day and it's infrastructure. That makes no sense. — Max Barry

Haze condensed into Campbell. The reason he was lopsided — Max Barry

Good words were the difference between Emily eating well and not. And what she had found worked best were not facts or arguments but words that tickled people's brains for some reason, that just amused them. Puns, and exaggerations, and things that were true and not at the same time. — Max Barry

She's such a bitch," Tina says, which I find a little contradictory, but overall quite true. "She's got to be in charge of everything."
I sit next to her. "Well, I guess. But in business, that's leadership."
Tina stares at me for a second. "I can't believe you consider that a positive trait. How about her inability to accept other points of view? Is it good leadership to be narrow, too?"
"Focus," I say. "They call that focus."
Tina stares at me. "Her paranoia?"
"Business savvy."
"Compulsive need to have everything just how she wants it?"
"Organizational skills."
"Aggressiveness?"
"Aggressiveness," I say, "is already a good thing."
"Jesus Christ," Tina says, her eyebrow ring glinting in the morning sun. "Sometimes I worry about this country. — Max Barry

A tragedy like this, we all blame ourselves. — Max Barry

Librarians are amazing like that. They will hand you a book they know will make your eyes bug out because they know that is the point of novels, not to satisfy but to surprise. — Max Barry

The fact was, if you paid attention, people tried to persuade each other all the time. It was all they did. — Max Barry

Of course the Curies died. They identified ionizing radiation while bathing in it. There were risks involved in being your own guinea pig. But there was a long tradition of scientists doing just that: of paying for the expansion of human knowledge with their lives. I didn't deserve to be categorized with them, because honestly, I wasn't interested in the greater good. I just wanted to make myself better legs. I didn't mind other people benefiting in some long-term indirect way but it wasn't what motivated me. I felt guilty about this for a while. Every time a lab assistant looked at me with starstruck eyes, I felt I should confess: Look, I'm not being heroic. I'm just interested in seeing what I can do. Then it occured to me that maybe they all felt this way. All these great scientists who risked their themselves to bring light to darkness, maybe they weren't especially altruistic either. Maybe they were like me, seeing what they could do. — Max Barry

He kissed her, because fuck it, he was probably about to die. — Max Barry

[S]he was in a pretty crazy place, screaming and waving the bucket-knife around, spattered with blood from head to toe. Lee was lying on the floor, quietly pumping out his life through his throat. — Max Barry

Elizabeth is smart, ruthless, and emotionally damaged ... [i]f Elizabeth's brain was a person, it would have scars, tattoos, and be missing one eye. — Max Barry

I usually like to interact with people who don't speak until it's necessary but I was intimidated by Carl's physique. I didn't feel inferior so much as incompatible. Carl existed on a plane where success was measured by physical feats. He had a brain because his body needed it, rather than the opposite. I didn't understand such people. I didn't know what they wanted, or might do. — Max Barry

He had no intention of removing the tumor. It was the perfect solution to his dilemma: how to feed his body's desire for intimacy. He was delusional, of course. There was no higher presence filling him with love, connecting him to all things. It only felt that way. But that was fine. That was ideal. He would not have trusted a God outside his head. — Max Barry

I will not be what I was made, but what I make. — Max Barry

I don't think you've been in love. Not recently, anyway. I'm not sure you remember what it's like. It compromises you. It takes over your body. Like a bareword. I think love is a bareword. — Max Barry

Look, I understand that for a lot of people, the US is superior to their country of residence in myriad ways, but I'm Australian. We have it all: the weather, the beautiful cities, the brand of football that involves neither padding yourself up like Santa Claus nor standing in a line in front of goal and covering your testicles. — Max Barry

I just read them for fun."
"Dictionaries?"
"Yes."
"That doesn't sound like fun. That sounds awful."
"Awful used to mean 'full of awe.' The same meaning as awesome. I learned that from a dictionary."
He blinked.
"See?" She said. "Fun. — Max Barry

It was funny how as soon as you knew there was something better, what you had seemed unbearable. — Max Barry

Fifteen years ago, this would have been insider trading, but that quaint concept had disappeared a decade or two ago when so many brokers were doing it that it was impossible to jail them all. Now it was called smart trading. — Max Barry

The most fundamental thing about a person is desire. It defines them. Tell me what a person wants, truly wants, and I'll tell you who they are, and how to persuade them. — Max Barry

Australians were very practical, Emily had found. They did things quickly and purposefully and to the absolute minimum standard required. It was refreshing and guenuine but sometimes led to situations like building a town around a hole. — Max Barry

Corporations! It's like there are these gigantic monsters living among us, and we don't mind that they're monsters because when we look at them they smile and hand us cheeseburgers. That's nuts. — Max Barry

And I, methinks, am gone astray In trackless wastes and lone. — Max Barry

'And so we exchange privacy for intimacy. We gamble with it, hoping that by exposing ourselves, someone will find a way in. This is why the human animal will always be vulnerable: because it wants to be.' — Max Barry

She put the words back in the envelope, because fuck doing that again. — Max Barry

These tests, though, were making her feel like a moron. — Max Barry

What it comes down to, you see, is that a naked body is just a naked body.
But the possibility of a naked body is something special. — Max Barry

I guess it's always uncomfortable to discover you're not as individual as you thought. But it really bothered me. From one perspective, I was an independent animal, exercising free will in order to elicit predictable reactions from an inert vending machine. But from another, the vending machine was choosing to withhold snacks in order to extract predictable, mechanical reactions from young men. I couldn't figure out any objective reason to consider one scenario more likely than the other. — Max Barry

To people at the top, the scariest thing is how many people there are below. — Max Barry

I think this is the first time I've altered a book based on what you guys told me. So it's an occasion! Soon I'll be putting up polls to choose between plots, and then it's a short stop to accepting anonymous contributions and stapling them together while I sip margaritas on the deck of a Pacific cruise ship. — Max Barry

This all seemed quaint and amusing, but as the book moved through to the modern day, nothing changed. People still fell to the influence of persuasion techniques, especially when they broadcast information about themselves that allowed identification of their personality type
their true name, basically
and the attack vectors for these techniques were primarily aural and visual. But no one thought of this as magic. It was just falling for a good line or being distracted or clever marketing. Even the words were the same. People still got fascinated and charmed, spellbound and amazed, they forgot themselves, and were carried away. They just didn't think there was anything magical about that anymore. — Max Barry

Monday morning and there's one less donut than there should be.
Keen observers note the reduced mass straightaway but stay silent, because saying, 'Hey, is that only six donuts?' would betray their donut experience. It's not great for your career to be known as the person who can spot the difference between six and seven donuts at a glance. — Max Barry

Sales is a business of relationships, and you must cultivate customers with tenderness and love, like cabbages in winter, even if the customer is an egomaniacal asshole you want to hit with a shovel. — Max Barry

Everyone's broken, one way or another. — Max Barry

These emotional cues were distracting. I was used to arguing with scientists who would explain with perfectly bland faces why you were wrong and stupid. — Max Barry

I love you,' she said. She nestled closer, her hand moving up the back of his neck. The wind lifted. 'Don't kill me,' he said. 'I'm not going to,' she said. — Max Barry

Someone from the Internet Writing Workshop sent me a link to the Gender Genie, where you paste in a section of text and it uses an algorithm to detect whether the author is male or female. Or, if you're an author, you can tell whether you're really nailing your opposite-sex characters. I mean, nailing their dialog. — Max Barry

I don't know how anyone can appreciate devotion that slavish. It's not objective. I have a similar issue with religion. — Max Barry

'Two things.'
'Name them. I am instructing you to name them.'
'I don't think you've been in love. Not recently, anyway. I'm not sure you remember what it's like. It compromises you. It takes over your body. Like a bareword. I think love is a bareword. That's the first thing.' Yeats didn't react. If anything, he seemed baffled. 'The second thing is I wouldn't characterize Harry as indecisive and untrained with weapons.' — Max Barry

In the sciences, looking good was usually a negative. It implied you wasted time on outdoor activities instead of building something useful. Even using hair product or makeup implied misguided priorities. Like you thought how things looked mattered, instead of how they worked. We liked to look at attractive people. We expected it of our movie stars and TV characters. But we did not respect it. We knew physical attractiveness was inversely correlated with intelligence, because look at us. — Max Barry

She didn't really enjoy reading but she liked how the books were clues. Each one a piece in a puzzle. Even when they didn't fit together, they revealed a little more about what kind of picture she was making. — Max Barry

'You can't stop me. Your word voodoo, it doesn't work on me. Right? So how do you think you're going to-'
Eliot produced a pistol. He didn't seem to pull it from anywhere. He just suddenly had it.
Wil's eyes stung.
'See?' Eliot put away the gun. 'There are all kinds of persuasion.' — Max Barry

'Your brain doesn't process language quite like other people. Why that is, I have no idea.'
'I have a superior brain?'
'Uh,' Eliot said, 'I wouldn't go that far.' — Max Barry

I felt vaguely outraged that such a bad person had such a good car. Because the car was the culmination of a thousand-odd years of scientific advancement. But the guy was a dick. I wondered when that had happened; that we had started making better machines than people. — Max Barry

You might be an intelligent person, but once you let someone else filter the world for you, you have no way to critically analyze what you're hearing. At best, absolute best case scenario, if they blatantly contradict themselves, you can spot that. But if they take basic care to maintain an internal logical consistency, which they all do, you've got nothing. You've delegated the ability to make up your mind. — Max Barry

I must be the latest in a long line of freshly dismembered men to fall under the spell of Lola Shanks. — Max Barry

Civilizations rose and fell; what caused them to be remembered was not their contribution to knowledge or culture, not even the size of their empires, but rather how much force they extorted upon the landscape. — Max Barry

We attempt to conceal ourselves, Emily, but the truth is we do not entirely want to be concealed. We want to be found. — Max Barry

People resist a census, but give them a profile page and they'll spend all day telling you who they are. — Max Barry

When it's done with being graceful and poetic, language is meant to communicate, after all. — Max Barry

There are stories - legends, really - of the "steady job." Old-timers gather graduates around the flickering light of a computer monitor and tell stories of how the company used to be, back when a job was for life, not just for the business cycle. ... The graduates snicker. A steady job! They've never heard of such a thing. — Max Barry

My own fault. The equipment had safeties but your primary piece of protective equipment was your brain. There was a presumption that anyone entering this room was intelligent enough to keep away from hot things, sharp things, and things carrying large stores of momentum. — Max Barry

She looked at her note cards and took a breath. Why I Love America, by Hayley McDonald's. America is the greatest group of countries in the world because we have freedom. In countries like France, where the Government isn't privatized, they still have to pay tax and do whatever the Government says, which would really suck. In USA countries, we respect individual rights and let people do whatever they want. — Max Barry

What was it Like?"
"What was what like?" he said, although he knew.
"Quick, I imagine. But you must have perceived something. A split second of vanishing awareness. A grasping at a shrinking light."
"It was like being fucked in the brain. — Max Barry

Tell me what you think love is! I seriously want to know!"
"Okay," Eliot said. "It's defining yourself through the eyes of another. It's coming to know a human being on a level so intimate that you lose any meaningful distinction between you, and you carry the knowledge that you are insufficient without her every day for twenty years, until she drives an animal transport at you, and you shoot her. It's that. — Max Barry

Thanks for being the kind of person who likes to pick up a book. That's a genuinely great thing. I met a librarian recently who said she doesn't read because books are her job and when she goes home, she just wants to switch off. I think we can agree that that's creepy as hell. — Max Barry

And, hey. You. Thanks for being the kind of person who likes to pick up a book. That's a genuinely great thing. I met a librarian recently who said she doesn't read because books are her job and when she goes home, she just wants to switch off. I think we can agree that that's as creepy as hell. Thank you for seeking out stories, the kind that take place in your brain. — Max Barry

The newspapers said nobody made it out alive."
"Surely you didn't trust them. — Max Barry

She had been in situations like this, where people said, Convince me, and in none of those had they actually wanted to be convinced. She could lay down a perfect argument and they just invented new bullshit on the spot to justify why the answer was still no. When people said, Convince me, she knew it didn't mean they had an open mind. It meant they had power and wanted to enjoy it a minute. — Max Barry