"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 is an Australian author. He also maintains a blog on various topics, including politics. When he published his first novel, Syrup, he spelled his name "Maxx", but subsequently has used "Max".
"Hack was asleep when the phone rang. It was amazing how much more sleep he got now that he was unemployed. He was starting to feel bad for all the people who had to drag themselves into their drone factories by nine. They didn’t know what they are missing."
"“It’s all responsibility and no control,” 6 says. “The classic path to failure.”"
"Last month we had to sit through a presentation on eliminating redundancy, and it was a bunch of PowerPoint slides, plus a guy reading out what was on the slides, and then he gave us all hard copies."
"I feel comfortably qualified to talk about anything, but thats a personal problem and Im dealing with it."
"“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.”"
"mktg case study #3: mktg shampoo PICK A RANDOM CHEMICAL IN YOUR PRODUCT AND HEAVILY PROMOTE ITS PRESENCE. WHEN YOUR CUSTOMERS SEE “NOW WITH BENZOETHYLHYDRATES!” THEY WILL ASSUME THAT THIS IS A GOOD THING."