Stories of Your Life and Others

by Ted Chiang

For the first time, he knew night for what it was: the shadow of the earth itself, cast against the sky.

I comprehend the Word, and the means by which it operates, and so I dissolve.

He opened his mouth to say that he knew exactly what she meant, that he had felt the same things as she. But he stopped himself: for this was an empathy that separated rather than united them, and he couldn’t tell her that.

He became an adult who—like so many others—viewed God’s actions in the abstract until they impinged upon his own life. Angelic visitations were events that befell other people, reaching him only via reports on the nightly news.

by the time he saw all the sides of her personality, he’d completely fallen in love with her. And because his best qualities came out when he was with her, she fell in love with him too.

For him the mystery was solved, because he understood that everything in life is love, even pain, especially pain.

Just as seeing Heaven’s light gave him an awareness of God’s presence in all things in the mortal plane, so it has made him aware of God’s absence in all things in Hell.

And though it’s been many years that he has been in Hell, beyond the awareness of God, he loves Him still. That is the nature of true devotion.

we’re seeing more beauty in one day than our ancestors did in a lifetime. And the result is that beauty is slowly ruining our lives.

True beauty is what you see with the eyes of love, and that’s something that nothing can obscure.