An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“This dumb little moment was the first time I heard a stranger hating me in public. I knew then, for real, that thousands of people were having the exact conversation all over the world every moment of every day. Those people were real and their thoughts were formed by overblown or just straight made up stories about me that I could never adequately defend myself against. People all over the world whom I had never met and would never meet hated me. HATED. And what they thought about me was completely out of my control.”

Source: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“People will hate you for no reason, or for bad reasons, or even for good reasons. People are torn apart by fame, and this is far beyond what most of them deal with. You're talking about yourself like you're a tool, but you're a person too. And an evolving one. This will affect your life forever.”

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“The thing about getting famous is that, often, the only people who are in a position to be honest with you about the realities of celebrity are the people who will make gobs of money if you go all in. They have no incentive to tell you the dirty truth, which Mr. Skampt attempted to tell me then.”

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“Imagine if you looked different to every person who saw you. Not, like, some people thought you were more or less attractive, but one person thinks you're a sixty-five-year-old cowboy from Wyoming complete with boots and hat and leathery skin, and the next person sees an eleven-year-old girl wearing a baseball uniform. You have no control over this, and what you look like has nothing to do with the life you have lived or even your genome. You have no idea what each person sees when they look at you. That's what fame is like. You think this sounds like beauty because we sometimes that beauty is all in the eye of the one beholding the beauty. And, indeed, we don't get to decide if we are beautiful. Different people will have different opinions, and the only person who gets to decide if I'm attractive is the person looking at me. But then there is some consensus about what attractive is. Beauty is an attribute defined by human nature and culture. I can my eyes and my lips and my boobs when I look in a mirror. I know what I look like. Fame is not this way. A person's fame is in everyone's head except their own. You could be checking into your flight at the airport and 999 people will see you as just another face in the crowd. The thousandth might think you're more famous than Jesus. As you can imagine, this makes fame pretty disorienting. You never know who knows what. You never know if someone is looking at you because you went to college with them or because they've been watching your videos or listening to your music or reading about you in magazines for years. You never know if they know you and love you. Worse, you never know if they know you and hate you.”

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“The trick to looking cool is not caring whether you look cool. so the momentyou achieve perfect coolness is simultaniously the moment that you actually, completely don't care.”

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“The most insidious part of fame for April wasn't that other people dehumanized her; it was that she dehumanized herself. She came to see herself not as a person but as a tool.”

Source: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

Internet Fame

“The most insidious party of fame for April wasn't that other people dehumanized her; it was that she dehumanized herself. She came to see herself not as a person but as a tool. And if that tool wasn't being used, sharpened, refined, or strengthened at every opportunity, then she was letting the world down.”

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“...He kept reading to me until well after I was asleep.”

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Love Romantic Cute Moment Robin April May

“Knowing something is a bad idea does not always decrease the odds that you will do it.”

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People Ideas Humor Funny Comedy Human Thoughts Emotions Bad Idea

“We are each individual, but the far greater thing is what we are together, and if that isn't protected and cherished, we are headed to a bad place.”

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People Humans Earth Individuals

“I'm stuck on this planet with you. And honestly, I'm glad. I've been exposed to a lot of awful people in the last few months, but I've met so many more that are amazing, thoughtful, generous, and kind. I honestly believe that is the human condition. And if the Carls are testing us, this final test is the hardest to accomplish. If you pay attention, there is only one story that makes sense, and that is one in which humanity works together more and more since we took over this planet. Yeah, we fuck it up all the time, yeah, there have been some massive steps backward, but look at us! We are one species now more than we have ever been. People fight against that, and they probably always will, but could there be any time in history when what Carl is asking would be more possible?”

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People Earth Humanity Society Human Condition

“The power that each of us has over complete strangers to make them feel terrible and and frightened and weak is amazing.”

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Feelings Power Of Words Strangers Feelings Of Weakness

“We are irrational beings, easy to manipulate if you're willing to do whatever it takes. That's exactly how terrorists convince themselves that murder is worthwhile.”

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Human Irrationality

“Branding is something designers think about a lot. You take something like a perfume or car tire, or butt-flavored bubblegum, and you ask questions about it that you shouldn't be able to ask. What kind of tuxedo would this car tire wear to the prom? What is this perfume's favorite movie? You try to end up in a place where you understand a product as if it is a person. The reverse of this, where people become brands, should be easy right? They're already people... End at the beginning. Except that really what you're doing when you brand is a process of simplification. You come to understand the essence of that fucking tire. And so branding a person also benefits dramatically from simplicity. People are complicated, but brands are simple.”

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People Design Personality Human Essence Simplicity Branding Brand Simplifying

“Even on this most terrible days, even when the worst of us are all we can think of, I am proud to be a human.”

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Humanity Protest April May

“the people are amazing, and from all over the world with different ideas and worldviews, all working together toward a common goal. It’s a pretty beautiful thing.”

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Life Lessons Beauty Positive Thinking

“Now, of course, I know how easy it is to feel like you don't matter if no one's watching.”

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Identity Value

“Carl just had too much mass - we couldn't stop falling into his gravity any more than we could jump to the moon”

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People Humans Important Ideas Gravity

“I had a very happy childhood; I just wasn't a very happy child.”

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Childhood

“Well, if I weren't so insecure, I would have had neither the opportunity nor the inclination to spend every day of my life getting really good at seeming confident.”

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People Humans Social Society Confidence Anxiety Insecure

“I don't think any of us are blameless when we all, more and more often, see ourselves not as members of a culture but as weapons in a war.”

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“Bring People together and promote a simple change and a better world.”

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“I saw myself as a leader of the community, not a member. I had no idea what a messed-up perspective that was at the time.”

Source: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“We are irrational beings, easy to manipulate if you're willing to do whatever it takes. That's exactly how terrorists convince themselves that murder is worthwhile. And the wound it left, it was larger than those lives lost; it was a wound we would all have to live with forever. The purity of my feeling for Carl was gone and I would never get it back.”

Source: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“It's weird to talk about these things as if they are fact since they were in a dream, but the fact that everyone experienced it in precisely the same way made it feel concrete. What is reality except for the things that people universally experience the same way? The Dream, in that sense, was very, very real.”

Source: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“Just working through what other people had done gave me a feeling that this was all actually worth it. When you get stuck fighting small battles, it makes you small. Hopping from cable news show to cable news show to discuss controversy after controversy had made me small. I thought only about the fight, not why I was fighting.”

Source: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“The clattering of humanity mixed in all its randomness was as relaxing to me as crickets chirping beside a rushing brook.”

Source: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“But when you walked out of that building, you created a new history that we have to live in now." She did not say this as something I should be proud of, more something that I had to live with. The dart hit its mark.”

Source: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“One of the best things about having money is paying people to do good work.”

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Quote Science Fiction Quote Of The Day Story Fiction Novel Hank Green An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“If you're wondering what the difference is, well fine art is like art that exists for its own sake. The Thing that fine art does is itself. Design is art that does something else. It's more like visual engineering.”

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Art Design Fine Art

“You say that, but have you played Cherry Blossom Fairy Five, April May? Have you?”

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Humar

“Stop thinking about my poop”

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Humar

“They tell you power corrupts. They never tell you how quickly.”

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Power Corruption Power Corrupts

“A friend of mine once told me that, no matter how much you proofread, the first time you open the final version of your book, you will find a typo on the very first page you look at. Ugh.”

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Truth Humours

“I don't even know what it would be like to not be attracted to a person because of their gender.”

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Sexuality Bisexual Pansexual

“Just because you can't imagine something doesn't mean you can't do it.”

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Inspirational

“What is reality except for the things that people universally experience the same way?”

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People Humans Reality Earth Universe Society Experience