Abhiraj

“All right," I said, still wishing we could talk about Zima rather than me. "But what practical difference does it make whether the artificial memory is inside my head or outside?"

"All the difference in the world," Zima said. "The memories stored in the AM are fixed for eternity. You can query it as often as you like, but it will never enhance or omit a single detail. But the implants work differently. They're designed to integrate seamlessly with biological memory, to the point where the recipient can't tell the difference. For that very reason they're necessarily plastic, malleable, subject to error and distortion."

"Fallible," I said.

"But without fallibility there is no art. And without art there is no truth.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Zima Blue and Other Stories

“Thought that can merge wholly into feeling, feeling that can merge wholly into thought—these are the artist's highest joy. And our solitary protagonist felt in himself at this moment power to command and wield a thought that thrilled with emotion, an emotion as precise and concentrated as thought: namely, that nature herself shivers with ecstasy when the mind bows down in homage before beauty.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice & Seven Other Stories

“Therefore he was very far from regarding himself as a paradigm, a pattern or example to be followed; but, condemned to be the exception, he was able at last to comfort himself with the thought that as such he was a "corrective" and, alas, a "sacrifice".”
― Walter Lowrie, A Short Life of Kierkegaard

“The context for hope is radical uncertainty; anything could happen, and whether we act or not has everything to do with it.”
― Andreas Malm, How to Blow Up a Pipeline