Fuyumi Ono · 464 pages
Rating: (2.4K votes)
“Now she realized that she was not peering at a so-dark-blue-it-looked-black ocean, but rather she was looking straight through miles of incredibly clear water at something enormous and black in its nethermost depths. Maybe it was the bottom--so deep that not even light could touch it.
And yet, down in those impossible depths, she thought she could see tiny lights sparkling. She stared uncertainly at the tiny glimmerings. They seemed almost like scattered grains of sand lit from within; in some places they clustered like colonies, faint and twinkling.
Like stars...”
― Fuyumi Ono, quote from The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow
“I'd rather be in danger with you than be safe without you.”
― Fuyumi Ono, quote from The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow
“The part of her that should have been disgusted was numb.”
― Fuyumi Ono, quote from The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow
“It wasn’t that she didn’t want to die. Nor was it that she wanted to live. She just didn’t want to give up.”
― Fuyumi Ono, quote from The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow
“It's not true that you were the good child. Not a good child at all. You were scared of rejection, so you made yourself a convenient child for your parents to have around."
"And your good parents - well, that is a lie as well. Not good parents at all, always looking over their shoulders, afraid of what people might be saying behind their backs. You think that liars who flock together never betray each other? Oh, you will betray your parents. And your parents will betray you. It is the way of all flesh. We tell each other our lies and the betrayed betrays the betrayer.”
― Fuyumi Ono, quote from The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow
“She couldn't live in denial of her own humanity.”
― Fuyumi Ono, quote from The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow
“Given the complexity of the chore, “escapees,” as free-floating fecal material is known in astronautical circles, plagued the crews. Below is an excerpt from the Apollo 10 mission transcript, starring Mission Commander Thomas Stafford, Lunar Module Pilot Gene Cernan, and Command Module Pilot John Young, orbiting the moon 200,000-plus miles from the nearest bathroom. CERNAN:…You know once you get out of lunar orbit, you can do a lot of things. You can power down…And what’s happening is— STAFFORD: Oh—who did it? YOUNG: Who did what? CERNAN: What? STAFFORD: Who did it? [laughter] CERNAN: Where did that come from? STAFFORD: Give me a napkin quick. There’s a turd floating through the air. YOUNG: I didn’t do it. It ain’t one of mine. CERNAN: I don’t think it’s one of mine. STAFFORD: Mine was a little more sticky than that. Throw that away. YOUNG: God almighty. [And again eight minutes later, while discussing the timing of a waste-water dump.] YOUNG: Did they say we could do it anytime? CERNAN: They said on 135. They told us that—Here’s another goddam turd. What’s the matter with you guys? Here, give me a— YOUNG/STAFFORD: [laughter]… STAFFORD: It was just floating around? CERNAN: Yes. STAFFORD: [laughter] Mine was stickier than that. YOUNG: Mine was too. It hit that bag— CERNAN: [laughter] I don’t know whose that is. I can neither claim it nor disclaim it. [laughter] YOUNG: What the hell is going on here?”
― Mary Roach, quote from Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
“Consider your origin. You were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.”
― Dante Alighieri, quote from La Divina Comedia
“But of course the instant I try to make myself relax, true relaxation vanishes, and in its place is a strange phenomenon called “trying to relax.” Relaxation happens only when allowed, not as a result of “trying” or “making.”
― W. Timothy Gallwey, quote from The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance
“perfect pitch is much more common among people who speak a tonal language, such as Mandarin, Vietnamese, and several other Asian tongues, in which the meaning of words is dependent on their pitch.”
― K. Anders Ericsson, quote from Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
“Gloating sack of fictional cellular miss-firings. “Wow,”
― Lucian Bane, quote from Seven Sons of Zion
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