The Atlas Six

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The Atlas Six

For some reason during the first chapters I thought it was going to end up being a Harry Potter-kind of book 😅, but it’s completely different.

Highlights

Beware the man who faces you unarmed. If in his eyes you are not the target, then you can be sure you are the weapon. — p. 5

Always dangerous, the pairing of hunger with any skill of manipulation; it is an essential law of human behavior that when given the tools to do so, those born at the bottom will always try to claw their way to the top. Those born at the top, i.e., Callum, were usually less inclined to upend things as they were. When the setting was already gilded and ornate, what would be the point of changing them? — p. 73

“Because the problem with knowledge, Miss Rhodes, is its inexhaustible craving. The more of it you have, the less you feel you know,” said Atlas. “Thus, men often go mad in search of it.” — p. 80

“But the moment we realize we can feel fulfilled without carrying the burdens of belonging to another—that we can experience rapture without being someone’s other half, and therefore beholden to their weaknesses, to their faults and failures and their many insufferable fractures—then we’re free, aren’t we?” — p. 246

That was the peril of thought. Thoughts were so rarely dismissed once they’d been picked up and toyed with, and a mind successfully altered could rarely, if ever, revert. Worse were feelings. Feelings were never forgotten, even if their sources were. — p. 257

Now Callum’s mistake was obvious: he had thought to prove himself strong, but nobody wanted strength. Not like his. Strength was for machines and monsters; the others could not relate to faultlessness or perfection. Humans wanted humanity, and that meant he would have to show evidence of weakness. — p. 270

A child told habitually of his worthlessness was now a man bereft of fantasy, lacking the inventiveness to lend him a broader scope. — p. 287