Iryna Dankiv > Iryna's Quotes

“He puts his claw against the divider. “Fist my bump.”

“Fist-bump. It’s just ‘fist-bump.’”

“Understand.”
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

“Oh thank God. I can’t imagine explaining “sleep” to someone who had never heard of it. Hey, I’m going to fall unconscious and hallucinate for a while. By the way, I spend a third of my time doing this. And if I can’t do it for a while, I go insane and eventually die. No need for concern.”
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

“After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil.”
― Dan Simmons, Hyperion

“I remembered Grandam telling me about an early Old Earth scientist, one Charles Darwin, who had come up with one of the early theories of evolution or gravitation or somesuch, and how—although raised a devout Christian even before the reward of the cruciform—he had become an atheist while studying a terrestrial wasp that paralyzed some large species of spider, planted its embryo, and let the spider recover and go about its business until it was time for the hatched wasp larvae to burrow its way out of the living spider’s abdomen.”
― Dan Simmons, Endymion

“Pain is an interesting and off-putting thing. Few if any things in life concentrate our attention so completely and terribly, and few things are more boring to listen to or read about.”
― Dan Simmons, The Rise of Endymion

“I explained my opinion of the ship’s logic. “That is a strange designation,” said the ship. “While I have certain organic elements incorporated into my substructure and decentralized DNA computing components, I am not—in the strictest sense of the term—a biological organism. I have no digestive system. No need for elimination, other than the occasional waste gas and passenger effluvium. Therefore, I have no anus in either real or figurative terms. Therefore, I hardly believe I could qualify to be called an …” “Shut up,” I said.”
― Dan Simmons, The Rise of Endymion

“I could not do this, I realized, if I were immortal. This degree of love of life and of one another is granted, I saw for once and for ever, not to immortals, but to those who live briefly and always under the shadow of death and loss.”
― Dan Simmons, The Rise of Endymion

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "We have a protractor.”
― Neal Stephenson, Anathem

“If you can't test it, it's not theorics -- it's metatheorics. A branch of philosophy. So, if you want to think of it this way, our test equipment is what defines the boundary separating theorics from philosophy.”
― Neal Stephenson, Anathem

“Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of shoes and he’ll come up with something that looks like the boxes that the shoes came in; ask him to make something that will massacre Germans, and he turns into Thomas Fucking Edison.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“It appeared that way, Lawrence, but this raised the question of was mathematics really true or was it just a game played with symbols? In other words—are we discovering Truth, or just wanking?”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“It’s not about how women are deficient. It’s more about how men are deficient. Our social deficiencies, lack of perspective, or whatever you want to call it, is what enables us to study one species of dragonfly for twenty years, or sit in front of a computer for a hundred hours a week writing code. This is not the behavior of a well-balanced and healthy person, but it can obviously lead to great advances in synthetic fibers. Or whatever.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“Sometimes, if you want to live and breathe tomorrow, you have to dive into the black depths today, and that is a leap of faith - faith in your U-boat, and your crew - beside which the saints' religious epiphanies amount to nothing.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“To say "I love you" one must know first how to say the "I".”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You've wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he's ever held a truly personal desire, he'd find the answer. He'd see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion - prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can't say about a single thing: 'This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me'. Then he wonders why he's unhappy.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores. But they don't know it. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who've never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you've felt what it means to love as you and I know it - total passion for the total height - you're incapable of anything less.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Toohey: "Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us."
Roark: "But I don't think of you.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“The difference between stupid and intelligent people – and this is true whether or not they are well-educated – is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. ”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

“перша - це піти звідти, де ти був щасливий. Другою помилкою стало рішення вийти надвір без мотивації жити
..- Із рiзних причин, - Андрiй спохмурнiв, намагаючись укласти суть кримінальної психології у стислу відповідь - Комусь не додали любов... У когось дитяча травма... Комусь не пояснили.. Одне слово, це ціла наука.
- Але передусім люди погані чи хороші?
- Нi те, нi те, - впевнено мовив Андрiй.- Передусім люди - тварини. А тварини, як ми знаємо, прагнуть жерти. Володіти самкою, домінувати у зграї... Виживати. Єдина відмінність людини - неймовірно великий мозок. Ото й усе. А те, що ми називаємо особистістю, духовністю, мораллю - це просто дуже великі лобні частки, - Андрiй постукав себе по чолу. - Плюс те, що в них закладено.
- I ким же закладено?
- Соціумом. Вихованням. Мамою й татом. Дещо, мабуть, передається й генетично, та загалом - той-таки Македонський лише відображав свій час.
- А як же совість?
- Просто звичка звiрятися з правилами.
- А каяття?
- Iще одне попівське слово.
- А яке ж перше? - в Харитоновому голосі пролунали азартнi нотки.
- Милосердя , ясна рiч!
..Бо є різниця між тим, хто не повірив і тим, хто перестав вірити. Перестає не той, хто засумнівався. А той, хто зачаїв на Нього образу
..- Якщо ви цікавитеся пітьмою, то й пітьма, безсумнівно, цiкавиться вами! - загадково проказав Харитон.
- Це Ніцше?
- Це ви. Остерігайтеся перетворитися на чудовисько, якщо б'єтеся з ними. Оце вже Ніцше. I теж - про вас.... Адже ви точно пiдмiтили: людина - тварина. Помилка тільки в тому, що ви знімаєте з неï вiдповiдальнiсть. Але ж призначення великого мозку саме в цьому - в умінні відрізнити свiтло від темряви! А що ж людина ? Використовує його з протилежною метою - Харитон вишкірився, дивлячись у темряву вітрового скла. - Вона прекрасно пристосувала свій мозок, щоб створювати виправдання”
― Ілларіон Павлюк, Я бачу, вас цікавить пітьма

“There is only one sin. and that is theft... when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“it always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“One time, when I was very little, I climbed a tree and ate these green, sour apples. My stomach swelled and became hard like a drum, it hurt a lot. Mother said that if I'd just waited for the apples to ripen, I wouldn't have become sick. So now, whenever I really want something, I try to remember what she said about the apples.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Learn this now and learn it well. Like a compass facing north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Laila watches Mariam glue strands of yarn onto her doll's head. In a few years, this little girl will be a woman who will make small demands on life, who will never burden others, who will never let on that she too had sorrows, disappointments, dreams that have been ridiculed. A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her. Already Laila sees something behind this young girl's eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone. Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila's salvation.
The little girl looks up. Puts the doll down. Smiles.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Though there had been moments of beauty in it Mariam knew that life for most part had been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it. She wished she could see Laila again, wished to hear the clangor of her laugh, to sit with her once more for a pot of chai and leftover halwa under a starlit sky. She mourned that she would never see Aziza grow up, would not see the beautiful young woman that she would one day become, would not get to paint her hands with henna and toss noqul candy at her wedding. She would never play with Aziza's children. She would have liked that very much , to be old and play with Aziza's children.
Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad , Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Friendships take minutes to make, moments to break, years to repair.”
― Pierce Brown, Golden Son

“Everyone's honest till they're caught in a lie.”
― Pierce Brown, Golden Son