Public perception

me: [reading a press article praising my team's accidental feature leak as a brilliant strategy for trickling out the word slowly] They called us "marketing geniuses".

J: [laughing] Yeah, I saw that.

me: This is because we work at Google. If we were Microsoft, they would've called it "another evil ploy to maintain their monopoly."

A passage I like.

From Shanidar, a story about a man who was a rich noble in a futuristic alien world but who decided to abandon his wealth and live with neanderthal cavemen:

"And Goshevan?" he asked. "He was happy with the beautiful Lara? He
was happy, wasn't he?"

"He was happy," I said, trying to slip my old hand from the young
man's grip. "He was so happy he came to regard his body lice as his
'little pets' and didn't care that he would have to pass the rest of
his days without a bath. His stuttering, which had embarrassed him all
his life and caused him great shame, came to a sudden end as he found
the liquid vowels and smooth consonants of the Devaki language rolling
easily off his tongue. He loved Lara's children as his own and loved
Lara as only a desperate and romantic man can love a woman. Though she
had none of the exotic skills of the courtesans with whom he had been
so familiar, she loved him with such a strength and passion that he
came to divide his life into two parts: the time before Lara, which
was murky and dim and full of confused memories, and the time after,
which was full of light and joy and laughter. So it happened that
when, the following midwinter spring, she pointed to her belly and
smiled, he knew with a sureness that he had not spent his life in vain
and was as happy as a man could be.