Anathem

by Neal Stephenson

“Long ago it was learned that recruits—no matter how much training they had received—tended to forget everything they knew the first time they got punched in the face.” “The first time in their lives, you mean?” “Yeah. In peaceful, affluent societies where brawling is frowned on, this is a common problem.” “Not being punched in the face a lot is a problem?”

All of the questions that had been open when my head had hit the pillow were still pending. But in the intervening hours, my brain had been changing to fit the new shape of my world. I guess that’s why we can’t do anything else when we’re sleeping: it’s when we work hardest.

‘vacuum with a sparse dusting of probability waves’ is an accurate description of just about everything in the universe,”

Your ability to have empathy with the Geometer—to imagine what it would be like to be someone else—isn’t a mere courtesy. It is an innate process of consciousness.”

to bake an apple pie you must first create the universe - Carl Sagan