Ed > Ed's Quotes

“It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“I’m a simple man without a lot of complicated twists and turns. Look down my throat and you can see out my ass.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“People tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory—and this is largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media. Frequently”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

“Chicago. It’s insane and violent and corrupt and vital and artistic and noble and cruel and wonderful. It’s full of greed and hope and hate and desire and excitement and pain and happiness. The air sings with screams and laughter, with sirens, with angry shouts, with gunshots, with music. It’s an impossible city, at war with itself, every horrible and wonderful thing blending together to create something terrifying and lovely and utterly unique. I”
― Jim Butcher, Ghost Story

“They walk into the hop field. Carefully. There is an enveloping smell, a resiny odor not unlike marijuana, the sharp smell that comes off an expensive beer.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“It reminds me of poets, before all this—how the sensitive souls who submitted their work to literary journals outnumbered those who read those same publications by a margin of about ten to one. Everyone wanting to be heard; no one interested in listening.”
― Adrian Barnes, Nod

“It was a comfortable, familiar apocalypse,”
― Adrian Barnes, Nod

“The same waves had rolled along these shores for millions of years; dinosaurs once bathed in the same water I now paddled through. During the intervening millennia mountains had risen and fallen and all the plants and animals had been replaced and reinvented. But the water hadn’t changed.”
― Adrian Barnes, Nod

“A real story takes time to prepare”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“What is it worth to see two former bitter enemies transform weapons into transport for exploration and the pursuit of scientific knowledge? What is it worth to see former enemy nations turn their warriors into crewmates and lifelong friends? This is impossible to put a dollar figure on, but to me it’s one of the things that makes this project worth the expense, even worth risking our lives.”
― Scott Kelly, Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

“Only later, when the Twitter chat is over, do I have the chance to reflect that I just experienced being trolled, in space, by the second man on the moon, while also engaging in a Twitter conversation with the president.”
― Scott Kelly, Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

“The human collective knows far more today than did the ancient bands. But at the individual level, ancient foragers were the most knowledgeable and skilful people in history.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“There are people who die by remaining alive and others who gain life by dying.”
― Eiji Yoshikawa, Musashi: An Epic Novel of the Samurai Era

“Those who would trade a little liberty for a little security deserved neither and would lose both.”
― Brad Thor, Backlash

“We’re not making any official statements, especially when James Holden’s in the room. No offense, but your track record for blurting information at inopportune moments is the stuff of legend.”
― James S.A. Corey, Nemesis Games

“Human violence as a kind of fractal—self-similar on all scales from bar fight to system-wide war. The buildup of insults and lost face that swelled over the course of an evening or a century. The shoving and shoving back, neither side sure they wanted to escalate and uncertain how to back down.”
― James S.A. Corey, Babylon's Ashes

“No turtles were visible. For that Alex was grateful, although it made him nervous. Where were they?”
― Christopher Paolini, Fractal Noise

“Rikke had never been able to understand why you’d care a shit who someone you’d never even met lay with. How few problems do you need to have before you count that among ’em?”
― Joe Abercrombie, A Little Hatred