Ian Lewis > Ian's Quotes

“Here is a secret Chang E knew, though her mother didn't.

Past a certain point, you stop being able to go home. At this point, when you have got this far from where you were, the thread snaps. The narrative breaks. And you are forced, pastless, to invent yourself anew.

At a certain point, this stops being sad -- but who knows if any human has ever reached that point?”
― Zen Cho, The Four Generations of Chang E

“But a woman should not marry where there is no respect. Respect is the most important thing.”
― Zen Cho, Spirits Abroad

“This time, let us hope you will get to be old," she said. "It is a great suffering to know youth only.”
― Zen Cho, The Terracotta Bride

“When she woke up she was a new person. She was dead, but she wasn't alone. There was nothing to be scared of in this new life. With six aunts behind you, you can be anything.”
― Zen Cho, The House of Aunts

“Ah Ma tried to teach your Mummy to bring her children up right, but there's no need to be so strict. You are her daughter, whether you are good or naughty. Ah Ma should have explained.”
― Zen Cho, The House of Aunts

“We don’t have to fall into the same category to be of equal value.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“There’s just some things in the universe that are better left un-fucked-with.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“Then how,” Dex said, “how does the idea of maybe being meaningless sit well with you?” Mosscap considered. “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful,”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“Do you not find consciousness alone to be the most exhilarating thing? Here we are, in this incomprehensibly large universe, on this one tiny moon around this one incidental planet, and in all the time this entire scenario has existed, every component has been recycled over and over and over again into infinitely incredible configurations, and sometimes, those configurations are special enough to be able to see the world around them. You and I—we’re just atoms that arranged themselves the right way, and we can understand that about ourselves. Is that not amazing?”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“No, he is not tactful, yet have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet, at the same time, beautiful?”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without effort, whilst we look up, marvelling how he has escaped us, and thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but translate his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions. Perhaps he cannot; certainly he does not, or does so very seldom.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“It seemed like a mistake. And mistakes ought to be rectified, only this one couldn't be. Between the way things used to be and the way they were now was a void that couldn't be crossed. I had to find an explanation other than the real one, which was that we were no more immune to misfortune than anybody else, and the idea that kept recurring to me...was that I had inadvertently walked through a door that I shouldn't have gone through and couldn't get back to the place I hadn't meant to leave. Actually, it was other way round: I hadn't gone anywhere and nothing was changed, so far as the roof over our heads was concerned, it was just that she was in the cemetery.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“They looked at me, and were so full of delight in the pleasure they were giving me that some final thread of resistance gave way and I understood not only how entirely generous they were but also that generosity might be the greatest pleasure there is.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“I had inadvertently walked through a door that I shouldn’t have gone through and couldn’t get back to the place I hadn’t meant to leave.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory - meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion - is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“Do you suppose there's any difference between spring in nature and spring in man? But there we go, praising the one and condemning the other as improper, ashamed that the same laws work eternally through both.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“...she had been meaningless, but at the end there was presented to the girl the complete picture of a cheerless, loveless world in which the young rush to destruction until they learn better -- a shamefaced world of precautions and barriers which may avert evil, but which do not seem to bring good, if we may judge from those who have used them most.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room With A View

“She only felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go easier, the world be happier, if she could give and receive some human love.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Beauty is power and elegance, right action, form fitting function, intelligence, and reasonability. And very often expressed in curves.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars

“She gave up trying to understand herself, and the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catch-words. The armies are full of pleasant and pious folk. But they have yielded to the only enemy that matters — the enemy within. They have sinned against passion and truth, and vain will be their strife after virtue. As the years pass, they are censured. Their pleasantry and their piety show cracks, their wit becomes cynicism, their unselfishness hypocrisy; they feel and produce discomfort wherever they go.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“It was the creation of a world I thought there ought to be. It was filled with the gentleness and kindness and the courage that I thought were needed in the world.... I made the dogs and robots the kind of people I would like to live with. And the vital point is this: That they must be dogs or robots, because people were not that kind of folks.”
― Clifford D. Simak

“We are not lords of the universe. We're one small part of it. We may be its consciousness, but being the consciousness of the universe does not mean turning it all into a mirror image of us. It means rather fitting into it as it is, and worshiping it with our attention.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars

“The amount a person can spare is relative; the value of generosity is not.”
― Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate

“I was returned to the world of tendrils and worms, fungus and rock, locked together in an unbreakable web. Viewed in this way, you can never again see a tree as a single entity, despite its visual dominance. It towers. It’s impressive. But in the end, it’s a fragile endeavour that can only stand thanks to the contributions of many. We celebrate the tree that stretches to the sky, but it is the ground we should ultimately thank.”
― Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate

“But I’m not a moth. I’m human. And in humans, there are far more stages than just two. I could not have predicted each version of me that I shifted into, but through my history, one constant has always remained true: change itself. I might not be able to return to the other Ariadnes, but I would not always be the Ariadne floating in front of the mirror, either. I did not know who she was, the one waiting for me to start moving toward her. I was curious about her, all the same. I was eager to meet her.”
― Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate

“I'm an observer, not a conqueror. I have no interest in changing other worlds to suit me. I choose the lighter touch: changing myself to suit them.”
― Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate

“The cave is a reflection of us, in its way. Rock, water, and life, all of which need tools to examine them. All of which mean nothing if no one is there to observe.”
― Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate

“We exist where we begin, yet to remain is death.”
― Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate