he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Columbian drug dealers and I swore myself to vengeance. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.
Hiro used to feel that way too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way this is liberating. The position is taken. Sometimes it's all right just to be a little bad.
Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, 1992)
