"the private military firm Blackwater has asked a federal court to decide the case using the Islamic law known as Shari’a."

"considered to be the first-ever self-composing synthesizer"

"Pick two and connect them somehow, in your story."

"I believe that NASA should spend all its time building space lasers which can completely destroy every word these people write the moment they write it. Optionally, they should be ridiculed and abused until they are fired."

"We've heard before about the "profound systemic problems" with KBR's billing. But Smith's account is the first time we've heard about an implicit threat to cut off services to troops."

"It’s crazy, without question, but it doesn’t know it’s crazy"

"Virgil is less talked of than Pope, and Homer is less talked of than Virgil; but they are not less admired. We must read what the world reads at the moment."

"The Happening is basically a giant propaganda machine for intelligent design."

"Nielsen's apt description of the online reader: "[U]sers are selfish, lazy, and ruthless."

"74% of wired Obama supporters have gotten political news and information online, compared with 57% of online Clinton supporters."

"It's really about Thomas Pynchon, and the five-page diagram, along the same lines but on a much more grandiose scale, that I drew while reading Gravity's Rainbow."