Slow Gods Quotes

“We are the seeds of the forest, we blaze so bright, no life is special. No life is special. No life is special and all of them are. No love matters more than any other, no story is more important, nothing matters more, nothing matters less, so choose, choose, we choose every day to be more than just ourselves, to live for more than just ourselves, because it is beautiful.

(p. 201)”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“Worship implies faith. It implies believing in something when there is either a) no evidence or b) confidence maintained despite strong evidence to the contrary.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“Thus even in our feelings we find ways to embrace and reject each other, as if there were a true way to feel sorrow, a singular way to be in love.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“The thing that is always forbidden in all wars… is thinking of your enemy as people.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“If all things burn to nothing in the blink of the proverbial eye, then of all the possible reasons why they blaze, all the possible ways in which they may live, it might as well be with love.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“telling my story, there are certain things I should perhaps lie about. (I am a dreadful liar.) I should make myself a hero. Pretend I knew certain things before I did, was not used by strangers and gods, did not leave people behind. I should claim that I understand love. This last is most important, and I am trying. I am always trying. Is that not enough?”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“This is a flaw I have observed many times – people will expend vast energies in ignoring the obvious terrifying thing because it terrifies them so.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“MANY CULTURES ARE PROFOUNDLY SUPERFICIAL IN THEIR USE OF THIS WORD ‘LOVE’. NORMSPEAK IMPLIES THAT IT IS ONLY FOR ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS. THE NITASHI WOULD NOT COMPREHEND ITS APPLICATION WITHOUT A SEXUAL COMPONENT; ADJUMIRIS WOULD APPLY IT TO ALMOST ANY RELATIONSHIP FROM YOUR FAVOURITE BARTENDER TO A SOULMATE OF NEAR ONE HUNDRED YEARS’ AFFECTION. VERY FEW LANGUAGES HAVE THE CAPACITY FOR THIS WORD’S MANY MEANINGS. LOVE AS PETTY, SELFISH, SMALL. BLIND LOVE, CRUEL LOVE, HOPELESS LOVE, PARENTAL LOVE, SIBLING LOVE, FRIENDSHIP LOVE, FECKLESS LOVE. LOVE AS DESTROYER. IT DESTROYS MANY THINGS. I HAVE OBSERVED THOUSANDS OF WORLDS, AND IN OVER SEVENTY PER CENT, LOVE IS VALUED EVEN WHEN IT IS PURSUED SELFISHLY. WHEN OTHERS ARE ALLOWED TO SUFFER, WITHER, DIE, ALL IN THE NAME OF INDIVIDUAL LOVE, AS IF THOSE WHO FELL DID NOT ALSO LOVE, WERE NOT ALSO LOVED, DID NOT ALSO HAVE VALUE THOUGH YOU YOURSELF DID NOT LOVE THEM.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“BECAUSE YOU MAY ALSO ONE DAY BE A GOD, AND IT WILL BE IMPORTANT THAT YOU LOVE. FEAR IS A PARALYTIC; ANGER IS BLIND. LOVE IS THE VALUE THAT HAS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON THE GREATEST PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE OVER THE LONGEST PERIOD OF TIME. IF ALL THINGS BURN TO NOTHING IN THE BLINK OF THE PROVERBIAL EYE, THEN OF ALL THE POSSIBLE REASONS WHY THEY BLAZE, ALL THE POSSIBLE WAYS IN WHICH THEY MAY LIVE, IT MAY AS WELL BE WITH LOVE.” I think I should feel something. I sit and hold my near-empty cup, and wonder what it is. I think I feel… … anger.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“PLEASURE IS EVOLUTION’S GREATEST SURVIVAL MECHANISM. IT TEACHES US TO ACT ON THINGS THAT ARE POSITIVE TO US, WITHOUT NEEDING TO CONSTRUCT AN UNDERSTANDING OF THOSE EXPERIENCES EVERY TIME WE ACT. IN THIS CASE, IT REINFORCES MY EXPERIENCE OF THE CALCULATIONS THAT I HAVE MADE, INCREASING THE LIKELIHOOD THAT I WILL DEFAULT TO THAT SAME PROCESS AGAIN, THUS NARROWING THE RANGE OF POTENTIAL HYPOTHESES I MAY HAVE TO TEST THE NEXT TIME THIS EXPERIMENT IS RUN. I AM NOT LIMITLESS, YOU SEE. PERHAPS IN THOUGHT, BUT NOT IN TIME. TIME PASSES, FOR ALL THINGS.” “I don’t know what you want me to say to that.” “YOU WILL THINK OF SOMETHING TO SAY – LATER.” “Was that… funny? Did you just make a joke?” “IT CAN BE SEEN THAT WAY. HA – HA – HA.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“The kekekee of B48TCLM1 are born in the clouds and live their entire lives without touching the ground. Their sentience was initially missed, leading to an awkward moment when planetary investigators realised that not only had they revealed themselves to a moderately advanced civilisation, they’d also revealed the existence of interplanetary travel and atomic energy. The kekekee however didn’t seem to mind. The rest of the galaxy sounded awful, they said; but if people wanted to visit, that was understandable, given how wonderful their world was.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“Well, it’s been a rough few years. I don’t know if I’ve done right with my time, not really, though I did try. There were always reasons not to try harder, reasons not to imagine I could do more – but then I’d see all these people desperate to help, desperate to be the heroes, and where are they now? Where are they now? So I suppose what I’m saying is I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know how you’re meant to be this small in a universe this big, this insignificant in a galaxy where every decision matters, where every life is precious. I don’t know how to feel so huge and so loud inside, and so small and quiet before the dark.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“An electrical fire has been reported in the secondary storage bay, but that area is already in the process of venting and the circuit has been automatically isolated, so let’s just hope that sorts itself out. Water tanks are leaking. Hydrogen tanks are leaking. Internal bows are fractured. We are lost, and will not be found.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“We are the seeds of the forest,” I whispered. “No life is special and all of them are. No love matters more than any other, no story is more important, nothing matters more, nothing matters less. Where we fall, others may grow, so live. May your song be sung, may your name be whispered among the stars.” I do not think Maolcas heard me.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“Pitt asked if I wanted to join too, but there was something in his tone that implied he hoped I wouldn’t say yes, and therefore I did not.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“I think everyone who spends much time in the black eventually reaches this conclusion; against the infinite void you just have to let go of these illusions of agency, and trust to someone else – and to luck – that you’ll be OK. Afterwards, there was an orgy.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“Studies have shown that a crew that is in touch with its emotions – even its most destructive, hurtful feelings – will perform better in combat conditions,” xe explained. “So long, that is, as the emotional experience is honest and thoughtful, rather than a mere performance for social standing or born from unresolved internal confusions.” “What if you can’t tell the difference?” I’d asked. “Between people actually feeling something and people simply performing a thing? Or is the difference irrelevant? What if people think they’re feeling one feeling, but they’re actually feeling another?” “Well then,” xe mused, “I imagine you’re going to find navigating social relationships really rather difficult.” Xe was not wrong.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“Big emotion is not the same as big empathy. Indeed, I have often observed that it leaves little room for anything but itself, driving out all nuance or space to feel anything else at all.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“Big emotion is not the same as big empathy.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“The anthropologists tutted and shook their heads and said no, no, you don’t understand, this is just how these peoples are, all of us different, but the pain, the horror that underlies how we feel is the same. All real, even if it all seems different, listen! The Accord hummed and hawed and said well yes, we take your point… … and slowly turned their faces away.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“And there are ideologues, but the problem with that sort is they get so invested in the value of their big ideas that they become rigid, difficult to work with.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“Hé sees right through my skin, and still hé smiles and smiles and smiles, so that nothing can be believed except the sight of hís teeth.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“Delicious” in Adjumiri – it relates to taste, but it also implies an artistic appreciation of something crafted, something that stimulates the senses. Normspeak does not have an equivalent word – in Normspeak, “delicious” can only relate to an appreciation of a flavour in the mouth. Spindlers understood this; they learned Normspeak as a universal tool of communication, but as some of the finest masters of it, they also treated it with the most contempt. I liked Agran then, and thought Gebre would have too.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“faith. It implies believing in something when there is either a) no evidence or b) confidence maintained despite strong evidence to the contrary.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“We think fast, you and I, because we do not have the capacity to think slow. Our memories are too small, our energy finite, our time too short. We make predictions of the universe, and our predictions may be of hope, love, kindness, compassion, or of violence, pain, horror – and as often as not, the predictions we make become self-fulfilling, for they then temper our behaviour, make us who we are. Not so with the Slow. Qe remembers everything. Contemplates everything. Burns energy as if it were infinite. Cares nothing for time. Thinks. Keeps on thinking. And very, very occasionally, when qe has gathered so much information and spent so much time in thought as to be certain to a +99.9 per cent accuracy, qe will speak. And that speech will be as near to true as any pronouncements made by any creature yet living in this galaxy. So by all means, pray. Pray to the Slow. Qe is listening.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“Cuxil had not been raised to understand Shine, but many minds were now whispering to hers who had been born to it, bred to it, and they knew that nothing was Shinier than boldly breaking all the rules, then making one tiny concession to those who are meant to enforce them, who say thank you, oh but thank you for doing that one little, little thing.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“In the absence of exterior windows, murals were painted on almost every available surface, paint cutting in to every warning marker and safety notice, colours glistening and fresh. Images of faces with flowers for mouths, galaxies for eyes. Fantastic beasts, animals both mythic and strange, leaping creatures with antlers on their heads and arcspace engines at their backs. Paint layered on paint, nothing permanent, nothing lasting.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“We shall meet with rebels, scallywags and mercenary sorts,” Cuxil declared. “And at some point, we may even do some diplomacy too.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“There will be constant threat. Betrayal. Derring-do, you might say. Knowing this, I am here to ask you: will you be my Pilot?” I thought about it for a while. Then I said: “No.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods

“The real conspiracies – the actual plots and plans that will shape whole worlds – are often far too vast and far too impersonal to really grasp, and when they are grasped, they are not called “conspiracies” at all, but rather “policies” or “business plans”. They may not serve you, may in fact destroy your livelihood, your life – but as you, personally, the hero in this tale, may be powerless to prevent a surprise attack or a corporate takeover that destroys your home, these things are not conspiracy at all. Just macroeconomic forces, and you happened to be there too.”
― Claire North, Slow Gods