Bellwether Quotes

“Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else - cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments - as long as the paperwork's filled out properly. And in on time.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“The amazing thing is that chaotic systems don't always stay chaotic," Ben said, leaning on the gate. "Sometimes they spontaneously reorganize themselves into an orderly structure."

"They suddenly become less chaotic?" I said, wishing that would happen at HiTek.

"No, that's the thing. They become more and more chaotic until they reach some sort of chaotic critical mass. When that happens, they spontaneously reorganize themselves at a higher equilibrium level. It's called self-organized criticality.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“It was about a girl who helps an ugly old woman who turns out to be a good fairy in disguise. Inner values versus shallow appearances.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“Don't they know science doesn't work like that? You can't just order scientific breakthroughs. They happen when you are looking at something you've been working on for years and suddenly see a connection you never noticed before, or when you're looking for something else altogether. Sometimes they even happen by accident. Don't they know you can't get a scientific breakthrough just because you want one?”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“One of the nastier trends in library management in recent years is the notion that libraries should be "responsive to their patrons." This means having dozens of copies of The Bridges of Madison County and Danielle Steele, and a consequent shortage of shelf space, to cope with which librarians have taken to purging books that haven't been checked out lately.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“What's Management up to?" I whispered to Bennett.
"My guess is a new acronym," he whispered. "Departmental Unification Management Business." He wrote down the ltters on his legal pad. "D.U.M.B.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“I don't know who started the myth that sheep are fluffy and white. They were more the color of an old mop and just as matted with dirt.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“Management is proving beyond a shadow of a doubt they don't have enough to do," she murmured back. "So they've invented a new acronym.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“Insecure, ill-dressed chaos theorist desires intelligent, insightful, incandescent trends researcher. Must be SC.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“1. Optimize potential.
2. Facilitate empowerment.
3. Implement visioning.
4. Strategize priorities.
5. Augment core structures.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“Bigotry is one of the oldest and ugliest of trends, so persistent it only counts as a fad because the target keeps changing: Huguenots, Koreans, homosexuals, Muslims, Tutsis, Jews, Quakers, wolves, Serbs, Salem housewives. Nearly every group, so long as it’s small and different, has had a turn, and the pattern never changes—disapproval, isolation, demonization, persecution. Which was one of the reasons it’d be nice to find the switch that turned fads on. I’d like to turn that one off for good.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“I picked out F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" and a couple of mysteries, which always have simple, solvable problems like "How did the murderer get into the locked room?" instead of hard ones like "What causes trends?" and "What did I do to deserve Flip?" and then went over to the eight hundreds.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“Since I spend my working days studying trends, many of which are downright disgusting, I feel it’s my duty after work to encourage the trends I’d like to see catch on, like signaling before you change lanes, and chocolate cheesecake. And reading. Also,”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether: A Novel

“Eureka!"s like the one Archimedes had when he stepped in a bathtub and suddenly realized the answer to the problem of testing metals' density are few and far between, and mostly it's just trying and failing and trying something else, feeding in data and eliminating variables and staring at the results, trying to figure out where you went wrong.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“...It was only ninety-four pages long, and so obviously wretchedly written it was destined to become a huge fad”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“Can anybody join this FLIP?” the waitress said. “I’m already in a latte recovery group, but there aren’t any cute guys in it.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether: A Novel

“Great things.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether