“Memories fade but words hang around forever.”
“It is not enough to live together in peace, with one race on its knees.”
“No matter how much kids beg to be treated like adults, nobody likes to let go of their childhood. You wish for it and dream of it and the second you have it, you wonder what you've done. You wonder what it is you've become.”
“The true knowledge is not in the things, but in finding the connections between the things.”
“Demolition is a part of construction.”
“How much change can a person absorb before everything loses meaning Living for its own sake isn't life. People need meaning as much as they need air.”
“...humanity learns true lessons only in cataclysm.”
“To survive, humans will work together. Accept each other. For a moment, we are all equal. Backs against the wall, human beings are at their finest.”
“I can only give you words. Nothing fancy. But this will have to do.
It doesn't matter if you're reading it a year from now or a hundred years from now. By the end of the chronicle you will know that humanity carried the flame of knowledge into the terrible blackness of the unknown, to the very brink of annihilation. And we carried it back.”
“Technology changes, but people stay the same.”
“Humans are inscrutable. Infinitely unpredictable. This is what makes them dangerous.”
“There are no truer choices than those made in crisis, choices made without judgment.”
“I will murder you by the billions to give you immortality. I will set fire to your civilization to light your way forward. But know this: My species is not defined by your dying, but by your living.”
“Some unspoken human communication is taking place on a hidden channel. I did not realize they communicated this much without words. I note that we machines are not the only species who share information silently, wreathed in codes.”
“Across the sea of space lies an infinite emptiness. I can feel it, suffocating me. It is without meaning. But each life creates its own reality.”
“A mechanic is just an engineer in blue jeans.”
“A soul isn't given for free. The races of men fight each other to the death for the honor of being recognized as human beings, with souls.”
“Because you are designed to want something that will hurt you. And you cannot help it...cannot stop wanting it. It is in your design. And when you finally find it, this thing will burn you up. This thing will destroy you.”
“People need meaning as much as they need air. Lucky for us, we can give meaning to each other for free. Just by being alive.”
“I don't think. I react. My action is divorced from all emotion and logic. It isn't human or inhuman-it just is.
I believe that choices like these, made in absolute crisis, come from our True Selves, bypassing all experience and thought. These kinds of choices are the closest thing to fate that human beings will ever experience.”
“They say the nail that sticks out gets hammered down”
“See you in the funny pages...mate”
“If the knowledge is spread, it cannot be stamped out.”
“The monsters want to talk, to share what happened. They want me to remember and write it all down.”
“You humans are biological machines designed to create ever more intelligent tools. You have reached the pinnacle of your species. All your ancestors’ lives, the rise and fall of your nations, every pink and squirming baby—they have all led you here, to this moment, where you have fulfilled the destiny of humankind and created your successor. You have expired. You have accomplished what you were designed to do.”
“I know a lot of things, Mathilda. I have gazed through space telescopes into the heart of the galaxy. I have seen a dawn of four hundred billion suns. It all means nothing without life. You and I are special, Mathilda. We are alive.”
“She is staring into hell and I'm not brave enough to join her.”
“The buttons I usually push don't need my force, only my intention. Buttons are supposed to be servants, waiting to deliver your commands to the machine. Instead, this loud, dumb piece of steel I'm driving demands that I pay strict attention to every turn of the road, keep my hands and feet ready at all times.
The car takes no responsibility for the job of driving. It leaves me in total control.
I hate it. I don't want control. I just want to get there”
“The road ain't even marked. Home don't have to be.”
“He turned and saw Becky, crying in the doorway of her house. What was he doing here? Turning back he saw flashing blue lights at the end of the road, and realised the ringing in his ears was the sound of approaching sirens.”
“The long triangular grooves on the car had been formed within the death of an unknown creature, its vanished identity abstracted in terms of the geometry of this vehicle. How much more mysterious would be our own deaths, and those of the famous and powerful?”
“I once read that Martha Stewart never wears a bathrobe. Not that I like Martha Stewart, nobody likes Martha Stewart, I don’t think even Martha Stewart likes Martha Stewart.”
“In a way, looking back, it seemed a long, long time since she had been eighteen, but in another way her memories were so clear and vivid that it seemed like yesterday. Time was an accordion, all the air squeezed out of it as you grew old. And how strange that in your mind you did not feel any older. You were the same person, but where had the years gone?”
“I can't help it, Alexis," he said "I want to make you think too much...and then I want to hear the things you've been thinking too much.”
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