“People misunderstand what a police state is. It isn't a country where ...” — John Lanchester Quote

People misunderstand what a police state is. It isn't a country where the police strut around in jackboots; it's a country where the police can do anything they like. Similarly, a security state is one in which the security establishment can do anything it likes.

Video games are the first new artistic medium since television, but they are more different from television than television was from cinema; they are the newest new thing since the arrival of the movies just over a century ago.

'The Big Short' is, among other things, a blistering, detailed indictment of the way Wall Street does business, and its particular villains are the investment banks.

Cheap money feels like the most natural thing in the world - if you don't think about why it's so cheap.

Sometimes people don't want to laugh because it's wrong to laugh at their own establishment.

I think most of the Washington foreign policy establishment exists in a fantasy world when it comes to Syria. They fundamentally don't understand that Russia and Iran, from the beginning, had much more at stake in Syria than the United States did. Russia and Iran were going to do everything possible in order to keep Bashar al-Assad in power.

If it was up to me, there wouldn't be no such thing as the establishment.

When I was younger, I just thought that my plans were probably going to be more exciting than my parents' plans or the establishment. I sort of got by on being a little bit of a rebel.