A desire for privacy does not imply shameful secrets; Mo glen argues, again and again, that without anonymity in discourse, free speech is impossible, and hence also democracy. The right to speak the truth to power does not shield the speaker from the consequences of doing so; only comparable power or anonymity can do that.

— Nick Harkaway

Amazon is a corporation, not a philanthropic trust dedicated to the production of works of art and literature.

— Nick Harkaway

And don't tell me the end justifies the means because it doesn't. We never reach the end. All we ever get is means. That's what we live with.

— Nick Harkaway

Another important consequence in the arrival of digital technology and its facilitation of feedback is that we can look at large systems and recognize them once more not only as part of ourselves, but also as components that can change... Now, though, we live in a world where text is fluid, where is responds to our instructions. Writing something down records it, but does not make it true or permanent. So why should we put up with a system we don't like simply because it's been written somewhere?

— Nick Harkaway

Are you addicted if there is simply no reason for you to do anything else?

— Nick Harkaway

At the heart of both democracy and capitalism is a simple assumption that, across the board, people make free and relatively rational decisions: that we are, to borrow a medical term, Gillick Competent.

— Nick Harkaway

Because for Gonzo, anything which may explode at any moment is clearly a girl.

— Nick Harkaway

Children, bored and opinionated, are scholars of the most dogmatic stripe.

— Nick Harkaway

Crotch biting menace:I have my mouth in proximity to your genitals.Oh, thou man who talks to my mistress over coffee. Do not irk or trifle with me! I possess but one tooth, oh, yes, for the rest were buried long ago in the flesh of sinners. Behold my jaws, upper and lower in righteous, symmetrical poverty. Move not, man of clocks, and heed my mistress, for she cherishes me, even in my foul old age.

— Nick Harkaway

Destiny' is the state of perfect mechanical causation in which everything is the consequence of everything else. If choice is an illusion, what's life? Consciousness without volition. We'd all be passengers, no more real than model trains.

— Nick Harkaway