Abhi

“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

“She whispered a verse by Amanda Hamilton:

You came again,
blinding my eyes
like the shimmer of sun upon the sea.
Just as I feel free
the moon casts your face upon the sill.
Each time I forget you
your eyes haunt my heart and it falls still.
And so farewell
until the next time you come,
until at last I do not see you.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“We go through our lives trying so hard to keep things black and white that we forget that the rainbow of love is actually colourful.”
― Minakhi Misra, To Die of a Name

“Intelligence is ongoing, individual adaptability. Adaptations that an intelligent species may make in a single generation, other species make over many generations of selective breeding and selective dying.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower