“It was common for my father to sit my sisters down and tell them things like, "I saw a girl working in the bank in town, and she was a girl just like you." My parents had never completed primary sc...”

“Mister Geoffrey, my experiment shows that the dynamo and the bulb are both working properly," I said. "So why won't the radio play?""I don't know," he said. "Try connecting them here."He was pointi...”

“Don't insult me today just because I'm poor, you don't know what my future holds!”

“Although Geoffrey, Gilbert and I grew up in this small place in Africa, we did many of the same things children do all over the world, only with slightly different materials. And talking with frien...”

“Don't worry about the water," said a man with a nervous grin. "This is hardwood, it won't ruin. You'll have this chair into your old years. How much do you have? I'll take anything. My children nee...”

“With the money my mother earned from selling cakes, my father cut a deal with Mangochi and bought one pail of maize. My mother took it to the mill, saved half the flour for us, and used the rest fo...”

“Kevyn, Ennesby tells me you are building a time machine.Actually I'm finished.In one afternoon? Wow... Does it work?After a fashion....I put a whole lot of energy into it, and the next thing I knew...”

“Engineering is the continuation of politics by other means”

“Each type of knowledge has value; however, from an engineering point of view, practical knowledge seems to be more valuable than theoretical knowledge.”

“People want things to be real. If you give them an excuse, they'll believe you.”

“The self is...a creation, the principal work of your life, the crafting of which makes everyone an artist. This unfinished work of becoming ends only when you do, if then, and the consequences live...”

“Makers?" said Toby. Jaysir nodded."We're not loners, you know. There just weren't any on Wallop. We love to get together, we just refuse to engage in social relations that are based on material ine...”

“[W]hen it's slow, they send you home, and when it's busy, they expect you to stay late. They also expect you to be able to come in to cover someone's shift if a co-worker gets sick at the last minu...”

“Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to p...”

“A man may beg, but a woman has to sell.”