Dea

“Our lives here are inexpressibly trivial and momentous at once, it seems he’s about to wake up and say. Both repetitive and unprecedented. We matter greatly and not at all. To reach some pinnacle of human achievement only to discover that your achievements are next to nothing and that to understand this is the greatest achievement of any life, which itself is nothing, and also much more than everything. Some metal separates us from the void; death is so close. Life is everywhere, everywhere.”
― Samantha Harvey, Orbital

“But if you think about it, that just isn’t true. What do you think?” she asked. “About what?” I asked. “That kind of thinking, I guess. Spirituality, natural living, all of it. It’s all so narrow-minded, you know? To me, it’s crazy. I don’t care what we’re talking about—God, divine providence, nature, some super-energy, the universe . . . Why would any force like that ever get caught up with stupid tiny human beings and their stupid, even tinier human problems?”
― Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night

“When he thinks of the six of them here, or the astronauts now going to the moon, he hears that haunting call – that’s what we’re doing when we come into space, asserting our species by extending its territory. Space is the one remaining wilderness we have. The solar system into which we venture is just the new frontier now our earthly frontiers have been discovered and plundered. That’s all this great human endeavour of space exploration really is, he thinks, an animal migration, a bid for survival. A looping song sent into the open, a territorial animal song.”
― Samantha Harvey, Orbital

“Before long, for all of them, a desire takes hold. It’s the desire – no, the need (fuelled by fervour) – to protect this huge yet tiny earth. This thing of such miraculous and bizarre loveliness. This thing that is, given the poor choice of alternatives, so unmistakably home. An unbounded place, a suspended jewel so shockingly bright. Can humans not find peace with one another? With the earth? It’s not a fond wish but a fretful demand. Can we not stop tyrannising and destroying and ran-sacking and squandering this one thing on which our lives depend?”
― Samantha Harvey, Orbital