Dead Money: A Novel

there were exactly three ways of dealing with a rich asshole. The first way? Flattery. The second way? Verbal blunt force trauma. The third way? Kill ’em.

matryoshka dolls?” “The wooden nesting dolls? One figure inside the other?”

It was much simpler, she thought, to see the world for “what it could be” if you never had to actually experience the world as it was.

texted like a Boomer—sporadically, with unnecessary punctuation—but

Big pharma, insurance brokers, even the oil companies. They’ve all developed a taste for their own bullshit. Tech’s no different.”

“Meritocracies don’t exist, Kenz. Don’t waste your time looking for one. You won’t find it.”

“It’s all just money. The whole fucking thing. The entire tech industry is a giant, soulless, self-propelling machine that runs on its own bullshit.”

Tech loves to pat itself on the back about everything. The VCs talk about entrepreneurship like it’s the last bastion of meritocracy. ‘In Silicon Valley, the best ideas win,’ they say.” Mackenzie scoffed. “But it’s all bullshit.

‘If you’re swimming through shit, keep swimming.’