“Network administrators all share an abiding and passionate desire for one thing: We want our users to shut up.”

“desires,” I mean things we feel that we need or want very strongly. There’s an element of passion in the experience of desire”

“One of the most powerful of all our passions is the desire to be admired and respected.”

“No single thing abides; and all things are fucked up.”

“We might not want to share our food or our money, but we do want to share our judgement. We want others to think we have more fun.But we need meeting-places of the mind. A Kilimanjaro of spirit that we've all visited so we can say of other things: it's shorter, or taller, or the same height as Kilimanjaro.”

“Yet I was wound up. I tick. I exist. I am poised eighteen inches over the black rivets you are reading, I am in your place, I am shut in a bone box and trying to fasten myself on the white paper. The rivets join us together and yet for all the passion we share nothing but our sense of division.”