The Fold

Almost any concept or idea in the world can be expressed through comparison with a classic Warner Bros. cartoon.

One of the tricks of being a good teacher, he’d learned, was not to overuse the Look.

We're looking for quantum donuts," said Mike.

You know when you’re in a rush and you put a T-shirt on backward? Even if there’s no tag in it, you don’t have to look in the mirror to know it’s on wrong. You can just feel it.

I think,” Bob said, “that a person can always find what they’re looking for, whether it’s there or not. They’ll just see what they want to see.

Back when I was in college, I wrote a short story called “The Albuquerque Door” for a junior year creative writing class. It dealt with several of the same ideas in this book, but with a much smaller cast of characters and on a much less talented level. Needless to say, it didn’t go over well with the instructor’s “literary” tastes, and while I didn’t agree with him on a lot of his points, it left me feeling bad enough about the story that I just filed it away.

Liquid nitrogen,” said Olaf. “Try not to shoot them.” “Really cold?” “Really explosive.

We take over six hundred pages of math and force-feed it to the universe through an electromagnetic funnel. We tell the universe ‘I don’t care what you think. I’m lifting my foot here and putting it down there.’ ” “And the universe doesn’t object?” Arthur finished off his whiskey. “Not so far.

Mr. Erikson, are you trying to imply that I fall for you in every possible reality?" "I can only tell you, there are a lot of parallels.

Need some help?” Mike raised an eyebrow. “Are you offering?” “Nah. I just like to ask people if they need help and then watch their hopes get crushed.

Because it was a New York Times bestseller that everyone was reading, and I had a chance to get you an autographed copy.” “Whatever.” “Cross is the head of the Albuquerque Door project,” Reggie said. “It’s in danger of being canceled, for a couple of reasons. I need you to evaluate it and show it’s safe and viable so I can get another year of funding for them.” “The Albuquerque Door?” “Yes.” “Well, you’ve piqued my curiosity.

Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. —NIKOLA TESLA

I mean, Marty really likes it,” Denise continued, “but it just seems like nothing but boobs and snow and blood. And the frozen zombie things. I just don’t get them. It feels like not a lot ever actually happens, y