Sourdough Quotes

“Here’s a thing I believe about people my age: we are the children of Hogwarts, and more than anything, we just want to be sorted.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“The internet: always proving that you're not quite as special as you suspected.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“I have come to believe that food is history of the deepest kind. Everything we eat tells a tale of ingenuity and creation, domination and injustice-and does so more vividly than any other artifact, any other medium.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“Greatest among us are those who can deploy “my friend” to total strangers in a way that is not hollow, but somehow real and deeply felt; those who can make you, within seconds of first contact, believe it.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“Baking, by contrast, was solving the same problem over and over again, because every time, the solution was consumed. I mean, really: chewed and digested. Thus, the problem was ongoing. Thus, the problem was perhaps the point.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“I felt the disorientation of a generous offer that in no way lines up with anything you want to do: like a promotion to senior alligator wrestling, or an all-expenses paid trip to Gary, Indiana.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“I told them I didn't have time for this bullshit, and if either of them wanted to ask a lady out, he could do it by text message like a normal person.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“feeding people is really freakin’ great. There’s nothing better.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“I needed a more interesting life.
I could start by learning something.
I could start with the starter.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“Southeastern Michigan is flat, almost concave; here was a world with a z-axis.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“my great weakness: if a task was even mildly challenging, any sense of injustice drained away and I simply worked quietly until I was done.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“I know I have strong opinions about everything - I can’t help it, I do - but this one’s the strongest. I waited too long to get out of that office. Much too long. I weep for those years.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“It felt, also, like an empty spaceship, and, as a rule, you do not enter an empty spaceship without first knowing the fate of the crew.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“On both sides, they've failed us...of course, we know about the industrialists. Their corn syrup and cheese product. Their factory farms ringed by rivers of blood and shit, blazing bonfires of disease barely contained by antibiotic blankets. These are among the most disgusting scenes in the history of this planet...

But on the other side...the organic farms, the precious restaurants...these are toy supply chains. 'Farm to table,' they say. Well. When you go from farm to table, you leave a lot of people out...I think more poorly of these people than I do of the industrialists, because they know better. They know it's all broken, and what do they do? They plant vegetables in the backyard.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“It's always new and astonishing when it's yours. Infatuation; sex; card tricks.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“In your message, you told me about your family, how you don’t have any traditions. The first time I read that, it made me sad, but then I thought about it for a while and started to feel jealous. Lois, think about it! No one cares if your restaurant has tables. You can build robots, or bake bread, or do something else entirely. You’re unencumbered by culture. You’re... light!”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“IT’S A MESS when strange events smack into the windscreen of a resolutely rational mind.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“It's always new and astonishing when it's yours”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“There had to be a scale somewhere—the scale of stars, the scale of far-off cosmic super-beings—upon which we ourselves, we humans with our cities and bridges and subterranean markets, would look like the lactobacilli and the yeast.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“On top of the city with my Loises all around me, I felt a tremor of something. Was it possible?

I had become interesting.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“It was a fungal party hellscape.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“The house was large and deeply lived-in, all the shelves and surfaces stacked with books and boxes, framed pictures, old greeting cards set up like tent cities...Every single surface told a story. A long one. With digressions.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“I told them both I didn’t have time for this bullshit, and if anybody wanted to ask a lady out, he could do it via text message like a normal person.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“yeast, which is a fungus, and lactobacillus, a bacteria. They eat flour—its sugars—and poop out acid—thus, sour—”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“And even if I fail-this is always the archivist's consolation-perhaps I will have laid a foundation for someone wiser.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“The menu charmed me, and as a result, my night, and my life, bent off on a different track.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“Did I see faces? I did not see faces. The power outlet looked like a little dude, but power outlets always look like little dudes.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“At General Dexterity, I was contributing to an effort to make repetitive labor obsolete. After a trainer in the Task Acquisition Center taught an arm how to do something, all the arms did it perfectly, forever,

In other words, you solved a problem once, and then you moved on to other more interesting things.

Baking, by contrast, was solving the same problem over and over again, because every time, the solution was consumed. I mean, really: chewed and digested.

Thus, the problem was ongoing.

Thus, the problem was perhaps the point.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“The loaf had a face. It was an illusion, of course. Jesus Christ in an English muffin. It’s called pareidolia. Humans see faces in everything. Even so, the illusion was”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“Compaq Lois spoke. Her voice was not kind or coddling, but stern. “Do you like your job?” My hesitation answered for me. “I know I have strong opinions about everything—I can’t help it, I do—but this one’s the strongest. I waited too long to get out of that office. Much too long. I weep for those years.” The seriousness of her statement quieted the room.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough