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“Durham said, “Do you know what a Garden-of-Eden configuration is?” Maria was caught blank for a second, then she said, “Yes, of course. In cellular automaton theory, it’s a state of the system that can’t be the result of any previous state. No other pattern of cells can give rise to it. If you want a Garden-of-Eden configuration, you have to start with it – you have to put it in by hand as the system’s first state.”
― Greg Egan, Permutation City

“One Saturday six weeks later we spent the afternoon in my bedroom, naked in the bright sunlight, inspecting each other curiously, without desire, as though we were museum curators cataloging idiosyncrasies: the raised mole here, a pale depression of stretch marks there.”
― Te-Ping Chen, Land of Big Numbers

“In 1926, Indianapolis adopted a regulation permitting African Americans to move to a white area only if a majority of its white residents gave their written consent, although the city’s legal staff had advised that the ordinance was unconstitutional.”
― Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

“in a compromise that gave the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, the White House. In return for southern Democratic support of their presidential candidate, Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops who had been protecting African Americans in the defeated Confederacy.”
― Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America