“He, like they, talked a serious game, for the future of the planet was at stake, and he, like they, was more or less a lummox, an oaf, and a simpleton”
Ecochondriacs, pp. 26-27
A Really Tough Problem
“But their problem was that no matter how many Pottery Barn windows they smashed, their fathers were still important figures in their respective chambers of commerce. The thing seem insoluble”
Ecochondriacs, p. 26
A Basic Choice
“She had been staring at some briefs in her brief case, and then went into the laundry room and stared at some briefs in the laundry basket, and decided that work was work wherever you are, but that she preferred being with people she loved instead of being with people she didn’t”
Ecochondriacs, p. 23
Which Is Not Unpleasant
“For the last few years he had felt like he was living in an invisible cloud of mojo”
Ecochondriacs, p. 21
His Own Private Heights
“The problem with all such proposals was that even though Brock Tilton was a cold-hearted bastard, he did have one hot passion. That one hot passion was the jet fuel he used in order to fly his insane ambition up to his own private heights. By this point in his career, he almost qualified as an astronaut.”
Ecochondriacs, p. 17
Resulting in Fizzing in the Ears
“She felt like her skull was a bone box full of water and that somebody had dumped about twenty-five Alka-Seltzer tablets into it”
Ecochondriacs, p. 6
No Categories
“This was an ethical dilemma with a fire in the attic. This was an ethical dilemma with the brakes gone clean out at the very top of the switchback grade”
Ecochondriacs, pp. 5-6
An Ill-Used Reliquary
“Now she felt like an archbishop would have felt had he been goaded into opening up his cathedral’s most precious reliquary to a team of scientists so that they could carbon date the finger bone of St. Andrew, only to have them come back to him with the hot news that the finger bone was only seven hundred years old, a time nowhere close to the time of St. Andrew, and that it was, moreover, the finger bone of a chimpanzee. It was the chimpanzee part that hurt”
Ecochondriacs, p. 4
Only Cash
“Fueled by massive amounts of money from multiple governments and international organizations, climate change research was a growth industry, a boom town, a cash cow that emitted no methane, only cash”
Ecochondriacs, p. 2
The Monster and the Dragon
“The malevolence of Grendel is hot, like malice always is. The rage of the dragon is cold, like the gold it is acquiring or defending. The dragon hates, but it is nothing personal. Grendel hates, and everything about it is personal. With the dragon, killing is a means to an end. With Grendel, killing is the end itself. The dragon is a night-flying outsider. Grendel is a cannibal. So this society is surrounded—hot enmity within and cold enmity without”