Ted Kosmatka > Quotes

“I'd ask you to think outside the box on this, but it's obvious your box is broken. And has schizophrenia.”
― Ted Kosmatka, Portal 2: Lab Rat

“I drank until I couldn’t remember which hand held the gun and which the bottle. I drank until they were the same.”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Flicker Men

“The enrichment center would like to announce a new employee initiative of forced voluntary participation.

If any Aperture Science employee would like to opt out of this new voluntary testing program, please remember; science rhymes with compliance.

Do you know what doesn't rhyme with compliance?

Neurotoxin.

Due to high mortality rates, you may be reluctant to participate in the new initiative.

The enrichtment center assures you this is a strictly selfish impulse on your part, and why can't you love science like [insert co-worker's name here]?”
― Ted Kosmatka, Portal 2: Lab Rat

“First we see, and then we reflect. Imagine a painting of a bicycle; then imagine the bicycle cast as a sculpture. Finally imagine a sculpture so perfect in every detail that it is indistinguishable from what it reflects. Imagine that you might ride upon this perfect sculpture. Is it not, in fact, just another bicycle?”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Flicker Men

“Once you believe in quantum mechanics,” I said, “it’s hard to rule something out merely because it is impossible.”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Flicker Men

“Speaking of boxes...

Do you know that thought experiment with the cat in the box with the poison? Theory requires the cat to be both alive and dead until observed.

Well, I actually performed the experiment. Dozens of times. The bad news is reality doesn't exist. The good news is we have a new cat graveyard.”
― Ted Kosmatka, Portal 2: Lab Rat

“I shook my head. “After a while, quantum mechanics starts to affect your worldview.” “What does this mean?” “The more research I did, the less I believed.” “In quantum mechanics?” “No,” I said. “In the world.”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Flicker Men: A Sampler

“They were so far-fetched, so ridiculous, that only someone with his kind of power would have a vested interest in shifting attention away from the commission. It was a method torn from the pages of the oldest propaganda books. Tell a lowercase lie, and people won’t believe it. Tell a standard lie, and people will doubt it. But tell a lie in all caps, a lie of truly colossal proportions, and that people will have to believe. And although such a colossal lie, when told by a man of power and position, requires little in the way of actual proof, it is still vulnerable to a large enough burden of contrary evidence.”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Games

“If you study magic, does it become science?"
"You learn it's all science.”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Flicker Men

“So there is only this place.” He gestured around him. “Only work. People forget they are going to die someday. There’s more to life than career and paycheck.”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Flicker Men

“The enrichment center would like to announce a new employee initiative of forced voluntary participation.

If any Aperture Science employee would like to opt out of this new voluntary testing program, please remember; science rhymes with compliance.

Do you know what doesn't rhyme with compliance?

Neurotoxin.”
― Ted Kosmatka, Portal 2: Lab Rat

“Depression is the mind’s way of telling you that you’re not doing what you should be doing.”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Flicker Men

“Never trust a man with only one book.”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Flicker Men

“the faces”
― Ted Kosmatka, Prophet of Bones

“The math says you can either know the position of an electron or the momentum, but never both.”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Flicker Men

“And there was the true artistry of a golden tongue. To be able to speak for an hour without revealing anything. To speak without leaving the impression that your words, by the hundreds, were full of empty air.”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Flicker Men

“You do not want to drink?” “No.” “I am curious, what you said with the gun, that you’d shoot yourself if you drank…” “Yeah.” “You did not drink on those days you said that?” “That’s right.” Satvik paused as if considering his words carefully. “Then why did you not just say that every day?” “That is simple,” I said. “Because then I’d be dead now.”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Flicker Men

“The detectors don’t induce the phenomenon of wave function collapse; conscious observation does. Consciousness is like this giant roving spotlight, collapsing reality wherever it shines—and what isn’t observed remains probability. And it’s not just photons or electrons. It is everything. All matter. It is a fault in reality. A testable, repeatable fault in reality.”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Flicker Men

“And how I hated the term, politically incorrect, hated the shield it gave racists who got to label themselves politically incorrect, instead of admitting what they really were. Even to themselves.”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection

“Can you half believe something? No, that wasn't quite right. This was quantum mechanics. The better question: can you both believe in something and not?”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Flicker Men

“And is that what you’d wish for him, to have an easy life?"
"Isn't that what every parent wishes for?"
"No," I said. I touched my own stomach. I put my small hand over his large one. "I hope our son grows to be a good man.”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection

“There is a moment, climbing a tree, when you know you should climb no higher. A winnowing of branches the farther you go, like the choices in life.”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Flicker Men

“She brought her hand up to find my cheek. “Why are the brilliant ones always so fucked up?”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Flicker Men

“You look at your child's face, and you don't wonder whose side you're on. You know. That side.”
― Ted Kosmatka, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection