Necessity Quotes

“I am small, but sometimes I am a small part of great things.”
― Jo Walton, Necessity

“Has spending more time with her stopped you thinking she's perfect?" I asked.
Pico smiled. "No. She's perfect. But I do understand her better. She's the perfect Athene, and that includes a certain amount of pride and vanity and temper."
"But surely—you know I'm not perfect!"
"But you are," he said, picking out the books and piling them on the bed. "You are the perfect Apollo. You're the light. And both of you grow and change and become more excellent, while remaining perfect as you are. Perfection isn't static. It's a dynamic form.”
― Jo Walton, Necessity

“Certainty closes many doors,” he replied. “It leads to dogmatism. Souls accept what they know and stop striving upwards.”
― Jo Walton, Necessity

“Are you a god, then?" Sokrates asked.

"What is a god?" Ikaros threw back instantly. They both sat up and leaned forward eagerly. Sokrates looked like, well, a philosopher. Ikaros was, frankly, gorgeous, more gorgeous than even Jathery pretending to be Hermes, because he was more mature. But there was no question he was a philosopher too, with that avidity in his face, twin to Sokrates's own.

"None of my old definitions will work, unless we allow that you and Porphyry and Athene are some other kind of being, and that there are unchanging unseeking perfect gods that are different," Sokrates said.

"The One," Ikaros said. "And I used the word angels in the New Concordance, for those other kinds of being. But perfection is a dynamic attribute."

"How can it be? The nature of perfection--"

"Perfect things can become more perfect, endlessly.""Excellence, yes, but perfection implies completeness."

Porphyry and I looked past them and smiled at each other. There was something satisfying to the soul in the way they so immediately became utterly absorbed in the argument. Sokrates caught the smile as Ikaros becan to explain the nature of dynamic perfection, which was exactly the kind of abstraction Ikarians and Psycheans love. "Wait," he said. "We're arguing with each other when we have an expert here."

"I'm not an expert," Porphyry said, throwing up his hands.

"But you admit you are a god?"

"Yes..." Porphyry admitted, tentatively.

"Then you must know what a god is," Sokrates said, with a brisk nod. "Please enlighten us.”
― Jo Walton, Necessity

“[M]aybe we should have talked about this before. Well, we weren't gods, we couldn't go back and talk about it any earlier than now, but we could talk about it now. We go on from where we are.”
― Jo Walton, Necessity

“Some say that I have self-awareness but no soul, that I am nothing but a machine. This seems un-Platonic as well as unfriendly, but it cannot be discounted as a terrifying possibility. I cannot erase this option simply because I dislike it so much. That too would be un-Platonic.”
― Jo Walton, Necessity

“I believe that Plato was correct in saying that our souls long for the Good, and that nobody chooses evil for themselves while recognizing that it is evil, though some may do it in ignorance.”
― Jo Walton, Necessity