Katya > Katya's Quotes

“I really wanted to talk to her.
I just couldn't find an algorithm that fit.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“There's no such things as survival of the fittest. Survival of the most adequate, maybe. It doesn't matter whether a solution's optimal. All that matters is whether it beats the alternative.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“What's the difference between being dead, and just not knowing you're alive?”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I'd rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas.”
― Michael Moorcock, Elric: The Stealer of Souls

“When gods die, self-respect buds', murmured Orland Fank. 'Gods and their examples are not needed by those who respect themselves and, consequently, respect others. Gods are for children, for little, fearful people, for those who would have no responsibility to themselves or their fellows.”
― Michael Moorcock, The Quest for Tanelorn

“You can't be careful on a skateboard.”
― Stephen King, It

“Cat: Where are you going?
Alice: Which way should I go?
Cat: That depends on where you are going.
Alice: I don’t know.
Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
― Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

“Imagine you are Siri Keeton:

You wake in an agony of resurrection, gasping after a record-shattering bout of sleep apnea spanning one hundred forty days. You can feel your blood, syrupy with dobutamine and leuenkephalin, forcing its way through arteries shriveled by months on standby. The body inflates in painful increments: blood vessels dilate; flesh peels apart from flesh; ribs crack in your ears with sudden unaccustomed flexion. Your joints have seized up through disuse. You're a stick-man, frozen in some perverse rigor vitae.

You'd scream if you had the breath.

Vampires did this all the time, you remember. It was normal for them, it was their own unique take on resource conservation. They could have taught your kind a few things about restraint, if that absurd aversion to right-angles hadn't done them in at the dawn of civilization. Maybe they still can. They're back now, after all— raised from the grave with the voodoo of paleogenetics, stitched together from junk genes and fossil marrow steeped in the blood of sociopaths and high-functioning autistics. One of them commands this very mission. A handful of his genes live on in your own body so it too can rise from the dead, here at the edge of interstellar space. Nobody gets past Jupiter without becoming part vampire.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“Even if God were here, it wouldn’t do any good. The entire human race has reached the point where no one is listening to their prayers.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“Sometimes I thought life was precious, and everything was so important; but other times I thought humans were insignificant, and nothing was worthwhile. Anyway, my life passed day after day accompanied by this strange feeling, and before I knew it, I was old.…”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“Why are you all like this?” Evans suddenly became furious. “Why does one have to save people to be considered a hero? Why is saving other species considered insignificant? Who gave humans such high honors? No, humans do not need saving. They’re already living much better than they deserve.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“The creation myths of the various peoples and religions of the world pale when compared to the glory of the big bang.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“Take those frauds who practice pseudoscience - do you know who they're most afraid of?"

"Scientists, of course."

"No. Many of the best scientists can be fooled by pseudoscience and sometimes devote their lives to it. But pseudoscience is afraid of one particular type of people who are very hard to fool: stage magicians. In fact, many pseudoscience hoaxes were exposed by stage magicians.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“Evans: We don't know what extraterrestrial civilization is like, but we know humanity.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“She was like a star, always so distant. Even the light she shone on me was always cold.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“If I destroy you, what business is it of yours?”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“For the majority of people, what they love exists only in the imagination. The object of their love is not the man or woman of reality, but what he or she is like in their imagination. The person in reality is just a template used for the creation of this dream lover. Eventually, they find out the differences between their dream lover and the template. If they can get used to those differences, then they can be together. If not, they split up. It’s as simple as that. You differ from the majority in one respect: You didn’t need a template.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“Fate lies within the light cone.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“It’s a wonder to be alive. If you don’t understand that, how can you search for anything deeper?”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“Time is the one thing that can’t be stopped. Like a sharp blade, it silently cuts through hard and soft, constantly advancing. Nothing is capable of jolting it even the slightest bit, but it changes everything.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“do you know what the greatest expression of regard for a race or civilization is?” “No, what?” “Annihilation. That’s the highest respect a civilization can receive. They would only feel threatened by a civilization they truly respect.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“No,no.Don't say where we are!Once we know where we are,then the world becomes as narrow as a map.When we don't know,the world feels unlimited.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“A person's memory is everything, really. Memory is identity. It's you.”
― Stephen King, Duma Key

“The truth is in the details.”
― Stephen King, Duma Key

“Are you still forgetting things?" "I don't know, I can't remember," I said.”
― Stephen King, Duma Key

“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin