Abhiraj

“All right," I said, still wishing we could talk about Zima rather than me. "But what practical difference does it make whether the artificial memory is inside my head or outside?"

"All the difference in the world," Zima said. "The memories stored in the AM are fixed for eternity. You can query it as often as you like, but it will never enhance or omit a single detail. But the implants work differently. They're designed to integrate seamlessly with biological memory, to the point where the recipient can't tell the difference. For that very reason they're necessarily plastic, malleable, subject to error and distortion."

"Fallible," I said.

"But without fallibility there is no art. And without art there is no truth.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Zima Blue and Other Stories

“He had already packed his bags. Everything was ready, tied with string, and labeled. He planned to take the bare necessities only: typewriter, a barrel of ink, ten trunkfuls of bedside books (he knew the rest by heart), the chicken runs, the portable rabbit warren, the best armchair, the piano and, of course, drinks.”
― René Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking

“Things change, even if you want them to stay the same. At the same time, you can try to change, but you will still remain the same.”
― Michiko Aoyama, What You Are Looking for Is in the Library

“Thought that can merge wholly into feeling, feeling that can merge wholly into thought—these are the artist's highest joy. And our solitary protagonist felt in himself at this moment power to command and wield a thought that thrilled with emotion, an emotion as precise and concentrated as thought: namely, that nature herself shivers with ecstasy when the mind bows down in homage before beauty.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice & Seven Other Stories