Laura Zhang

“Eventually, computers might outperform humans in the very fields that made Homo sapiens the ruler of the world: intelligence and communication. The process that began in the Euphrates valley 5,000 years ago, when Sumerian geeks outsourced data-processing from the human brain to a clay tablet, would culminate in Silicon Valley with the victory of the tablet. Humans might still be around, but they would no longer be able to make sense of the world. The new ruler of the world would be a long line of zeros and ones.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“What you don’t realize is that we are a strange and forbidding species to wild animals. We fill them with fear. They avoid us as much as possible. It took centuries to still the fear in some pliable animals—domestication it’s called—but most cannot get over their fear, and I doubt they ever will.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“The heavy winds couldn’t blow her off course. She continued. Even when her heart clenched and her skin turned crackling cold it didn’t matter, because the pure and naked part of her went on.”
― Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine

“So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?” Mr. Okamoto: “That’s an interesting question . . .” Mr. Chiba: “The story with animals.” Mr. Okamoto: “Yes. The story with animals is the better story.” Pi Patel: “Thank you. And so it goes with God.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi