Quotes from Schild's Ladder

Greg Egan ·  352 pages

Rating: (2.5K votes)


“My earliest memories are of CP4 — that's a Kähler manifold that looks locally like a vector space with four complex directions, though the global topology's quite different. But I didn't really grow up there; I was moved around a lot when I was young, to keep my perceptions flexible. I only used to spend time in anything remotely like this" — he motioned at the surrounding more-or-less-Euclidean space — for certain special kinds of physics problems. And even most Newtonian mechanics is easier to grasp in a symplectic manifold; having a separate visible coordinate for the position and momentum of every degree of freedom makes things much clearer than when you cram everything together in a single three-dimensional space.”
― Greg Egan, quote from Schild's Ladder


“You’ll never stop changing, but that doesn’t
mean you have to drift in the wind. Every day, you can take
the person you’ve been, and the new things you’ve witnessed,
and make your own, honest choice as to who you should become.
“Whatever happens, you can always be true to yourself. But
don’t expect to end up with the same inner compass as anyone
else. Not unless they started beside you, and climbed beside
you every step of the way.”
― Greg Egan, quote from Schild's Ladder


“It was a rigorous result in information theory that once you could learn in a sufficiently flexible manner – something humanity had achieved in the Bronze Age – the only limits you faced were speed and storage; any other structural changes were just a matter of style.”
― Greg Egan, quote from Schild's Ladder


“There's nothing worse than a label to cement people's loyalties.”
― Greg Egan, quote from Schild's Ladder


“You don't take a traveler for a partner if you hope that the world will always stay the same. You do it because you can't quite break away, yourself, but you can't live without the promise of change hanging over you every day.

That's what the border means, for a lot of people. The promise of change they'd never be able to make any other way.”
― Greg Egan, quote from Schild's Ladder



“That was the hazard she’d face every day, here: not just the risk that she’d give in to temptation, but the risk that all the principles she’d chosen to define herself would come to seem like nothing but masochistic nonsense.”
― Greg Egan, quote from Schild's Ladder


About the author

Greg Egan
Born place: in Perth, Australia
Born date August 20, 1961
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“If you encounter a werewolf in wolf form, you must quickly assess the situation. If he is ignoring you, move away from the area calmly but quickly. If he is watching you, look for the signs of aggression you would look for in a dog - bared teeth, growling, hackles raised. Raise your hands to show you are not a threat (Also try to look as little like roast beef as possible.)”
― Cassandra Clare, quote from The Shadowhunter's Codex


“She got up and he saw the skin of her thigh for a moment above the artificial silk, and a prick of sexual desire disturbed him like a sickness. That was what happened to a man in the end: the stuffy room, the wakeful children, the Saturday night movements from the other bed. Was there no escape––anywhere––for anyone? It was worth murdering a world.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock


“Roses are red, violets are blue, I have five fingers, the middle one is for you.”
― Gena Showalter, quote from The Queen of Zombie Hearts


“… hanımların görevi nahoş durumlardan uzak durmaktır. Böylelikle ruhlarımız – ve alnımız – hüznün kiriyle kararmaz. Kadınlar çiçekler kadar narindirler, dünyaya renk ve güzellik katmak için var olurlar. Can sıkıcı konularla uğraşmak erkeklerin görevidir.
(syf. 23 – 24)”
― Margaret Peterson Haddix, quote from Just Ella


“I listened long to your story,
Listened but could not hear.
When you chose to walk that path so overgrown,
I remained alone with my fear.

Cold silence covers the distance,
Stretches from shore to shore.
I follow in my mind your far-off journeying,
But I will walk that path no more.”
― Anne Elisabeth Stengl, quote from Heartless


Interesting books

The Merchant of Death
(42.2K)
The Merchant of Deat...
by D.J. MacHale
Death in Venice and Other Tales
(17K)
Death in Venice and...
by Thomas Mann
A Little Life
(107.9K)
A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara
Danny the Champion of the World
(48.2K)
Danny the Champion o...
by Roald Dahl
The Hollow
(18.8K)
The Hollow
by Jessica Verday
Narcissus in Chains
(50.8K)
Narcissus in Chains
by Laurell K. Hamilton

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.