Emma > Emma's Quotes

“Because memory…is everything. Physically speaking, a memory is nothing but a specific combination of neurons firing together—a symphony of neural activity. But in actuality, it’s the filter between us and reality. You think you’re tasting this wine, hearing the words I’m saying, in the present, but there’s no such thing. The neural impulses from your taste buds and your ears get transmitted to your brain, which processes them and dumps them into working memory—so by the time you know you’re experiencing something, it’s already in the past. Already a memory.”
― Blake Crouch, Recursion

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. —SØREN KIERKEGAARD”
― Blake Crouch, Recursion

“Saint Augustine said it perfectly back in the fourth century: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”
― Blake Crouch, Recursion

“When a person dies, he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past…All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. —KURT VONNEGUT, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE”
― Blake Crouch, Recursion

“Because memory…is everything. Physically speaking, a memory is nothing but a specific combination of neurons firing together—a symphony of neural activity. But in actuality, it’s the filter between us and reality. You think you’re tasting this wine, hearing the words I’m saying, in the present, but there’s no such thing. The neural impulses from your taste buds and your ears get transmitted to your brain, which processes them and dumps them into working memory—so by the time you know you’re experiencing something, it’s already in the past. Already a memory.” Helena leans forward, snaps her fingers. “Just what your brain does to interpret a simple stimulus like that is incredible. The visual and auditory information arrive at your eyes and ears at different speeds, and then are processed by your brain at different speeds. Your brain waits for the slowest bit of stimulus to be processed, then reorders the neural inputs correctly, and lets you experience them together, as a simultaneous event—about half a second after what actually happened. We think we’re perceiving the world directly and immediately, but everything we experience is this carefully edited, tape-delayed reconstruction.”
― Blake Crouch, Recursion

“Life is beautiful and life is stupid. As long as you keep that in mind, and never give more weight to one than the other, the history of the galaxy, the history of a planet, the history of a person is a simple tune with lyrics flashed on-screen and a helpful, friendly bouncing disco ball of glittering, occasionally peaceful light to help you follow along. Cue the music. Cue the dancers. Cue tomorrow.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Space Opera

“you lot would rather watch someone suffer untold horrors than watch them enjoy so much as a cool drink if you don’t have two of your own, and yours have cherries in them as well as more ice and little paper umbrellas, and even then most of you would still prefer to take theirs and have three. This is not the behavior of a sentient race.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Space Opera

“How else are you supposed to deal with people who like terrible things? Hit them with a shovel till they stop, that’s how.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Space Opera

“I don't know why you would even bring up the internet. The xeno-intelligence officer responsible for evaluating your digital communication required invasive emergency therapy after an hour's exposure. One glance at that thing is the strongest argument possible against the sentience of humanity. I wouldn't draw attention to it, if I were you.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Space Opera

“Everyone cried when the creature first spoke to them. No, not cried. They wept. They wept like the cavemen of Lascaux suddenly transported into the Sistine Chapel just in time for a live performance of Phantom of the Opera as sung by Tolkien’s elves.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Space Opera

“Life is beautiful and life is stupid. This is, in fact, widely regarded as a universal rule not less inviolable than the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Uncertainty Principle, and No Post on Sundays.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Space Opera

“But I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them. I had to do the work first, not knowing.”
― Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver

“My mother had enough magic to give me three blessings before she died,” I said, and he instinctively bent in to hear it. “The first was wit; the second beauty, and the third—that fools should recognize neither.” Irina”
― Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver

“There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away.”
― Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver

“A crowd of women around me doing the ocean of women’s work that never subsided and never changed and always swallowed whatever time you gave it and wanted more, another hungry body of water. I submerged into it like a ritual bath and let it close over my head gladly.”
― Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver

“What an unequaled gift for disaster you have.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“Listen, you impossible creature," he said, "I'm a century and more older than--"
"Oh, be quiet," I said impatiently.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“Okay, this is the wisdom. First, time spent on reconnaissanse is never wasted. Second, almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon. And finally, there is no problem on Earth that can't be ameliorated by a hot bath and a cup of tea.”
― Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grey

“The cucumber and the tomato are both fruit; the avocado is a nut. To assist with the dietary requirements of vegetarians, on the first Tuesday of the month a chicken is officially a vegetable.”
― Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grey

“The safest course was actually the simplest-do nothing at all and hope everything turned out for the best. It wasn't a great plan, but it had the benefits of simplicity and a long tradition. ”
― Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grey

“Were you listening to a word I said?'
'I kind of switched off when you drew breath.”
― Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grey

“The youthful stationmaster wore a Blue Spot on his uniform and remonstrated with the driver that the train was a minute late, and that he would have to file a report.

The driver retorted that since there could be no material differene between a train that arrived at a station and a station that arrived at a train, it was equally the staionmaster's fault.

The stationmaster replied that he could not be blamed, because he had no control over the speed of the station; to which the engine driver replied that the stationmaster could control its placement, and that if it were only a thousand yards closer to Vermillion, the problem would be solved.

To this the stationmaster replied that if the driver didn't accept the lateness as his fault, he would move the station a thousand yards farther from Vermillion and make him not just late, but demeritably overdue.”
― Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grey

“Her areas of expertise are bar codes, book titles and maps - she has an original Parker Brothers map of the world.”
― Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grey

“The opposite of racist isn't 'not racist.' It is 'anti-racist.' What's the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an anti-racist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an anti-racist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of 'not racist.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy. It's a pretty easy mistake to make: People are in our faces. Policies are distant. We are particularly poor at seeing the policies lurking behind the struggles of people.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“The good news is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be a racist one minute and an antiracist the next. What we say about race, what we do about race, in each moment, determines what -- not who -- we are.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Black people are apparently responsible for calming the fears of violent cops in the way women are supposedly responsible for calming the sexual desires of male rapists.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Racist ideas love believers, not thinkers.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“To assume the best about another is the trait that has created modern society. Those occasions when our trusting nature gets violated are tragic. But the alternative - to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception - is worse.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know