More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Every act of communication is a miracle of translation.
Tumbling, shifting, joining and breaking, they leave behind spiraling phosphorescent trails, each as unique as a signature, as they push and rise toward an unseen surface.
If cultural imperialism is what it takes to make the world a better place, then we’ll happily arrange the world’s information to ennoble the human race.”
We are now a race of cyborgs. We long ago began to spread our minds into the electronic realm, and it is no longer possible to squeeze all of ourselves back into our brains.
“This is the character yi, which used to mean ‘righteousness,’ and now also means ‘-ism,’ as in Communism, Nationalism, Imperialism, Capitalism, Liberalism.
A man holds up a sheep for sacrifice, and he thinks he has truth, justice, and the magic that will save the world.
The letters jiggled and nudged against each other. The z took on the shape of a kneeling, supplicating man, the e the fetal curl of a dead child. And then the z and e disappeared, leaving free in its place.
He looked old—a quality that children are among the last to notice about their parents
You know what the Chinese think is the saddest feeling in the world? It’s for a child to finally grow the desire to take care of his parents, only to realize that they were long gone.
Eidetic reminiscence is a fact of existence.
A scene is turned into a mnemonic, a conversation reduced to a single phrase, a day distilled to a fleeting feeling of joy.
The universe is full of echoes and shadows, the afterimages and last words of dead civilizations that have lost the struggle against entropy.
“There are many men who are outlaws in this day and age, but many of them are outside the law only because the laws have not been administered with virtue.
a boy stands in darkness and silence. He speaks; his words float up like a bubble. It explodes, and the world is a little brighter, and a little less stiflingly silent.
But the past lives on in the form of memories, and those in power are always going to want to erase and silence the past, to bury the ghosts.
