Exhalation Quotes

“My message to you is this: pretend that you have free will. It's essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don't. The reality isn't important: what's important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“The universe began as an enormous breath being held. Who knows why, but whatever the reason, I'm glad it did, because I owe my existence to that fact. All my desires and ruminations are no more and no less than eddy currents generated by the gradual exhalation of our universe. And until this great exhalation is finished, my thoughts live on.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“Though I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to you a valediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“The difference is that the heat energy we radiate is a high-entropy form of energy, meaning it’s disordered. The chemical energy we absorb is a low-entropy form of energy, meaning it’s ordered. In effect, we are consuming order and generating disorder; we live by increasing the disorder of the universe. It’s only because the universe started in a highly ordered state that we are able to exist at all.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“I wish you well, explorer, but I wonder: Does the same fate that befell me await you? I can only imagine that it must, that the tendency toward equilibrium is not a trait peculiar to our universe but inherent in all universes. Perhaps that is just a limitation of my thinking, and your people have discovered a source of pressure that is truly eternal. But my speculations are fanciful enough already. I will assume that one day your thoughts too will cease, although I cannot fathom how far in the future that might be. Your lives will end just as ours did, just as everyone’s must. No matter how long it takes, eventually equilibrium will be reached. I hope you are not saddened by that awareness. I hope that your expedition was more than a search for other universes to use as reservoirs. I hope that you were motivated by a desire for knowledge, a yearning to see what can arise from a universe’s exhalation. Because even if a universe’s life span is calculable, the variety of life that is generated within it is not. The buildings we have erected, the art and music and verse we have composed, the very lives we’ve led: none of them could have been predicted, because none of them was inevitable. Our universe might have slid into equilibrium emitting nothing more than a quiet hiss. The fact that it spawned such plenitude is a miracle, one that is matched only by your universe giving rise to you.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“You, I hope, are one of those explorers. You, I hope, found these sheets of copper and deciphered the words engraved on their surfaces. And whether or not your brain is impelled by the air that once impelled mine, through the act of reading my words, the patterns that form your thoughts become an imitation of the patterns that once formed mine. And in that way I live again, through you.”
― Ted Chiang, נשיפה

“Because even if the universe is lifespan is calculable, the variety of life that is generated within it is not. The buildings we have erected, the art and music and verse we have composed, the very lives we’ve led: none of them could have been predicted, because none of them was inevitable. Our universe might have slid into equilibrium admitting nothing more than a quiet hiss. The fact that it spawned such plenitude is a miracle, one that is matched only by your universe giving rise to you.
Though I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to you a valediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.” (56-57)”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“even if a universe’s life span is calculable, the variety of life that is generated within it is not.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“Bashaarat smiled: "Coincidence and intention are two sides of a tapestry, my lord. You may find one more agreeable to look at, but you cannot say one is true and the other is false”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“It cheers me to imagine that the air that once powered me could power others, to believe that the breath that enables me to engrave these words could one day flow through someone else’s body. I do not delude myself into thinking that this would be a way for me to live again, because I am not that air, I am the pattern that it assumed, temporarily. The pattern that is me, the patterns that are the entire world in which I live, would be gone.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we’ve lived; they’re the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“The second was the chapter in Roger Penrose’s book The Emperor’s New Mind in which he discusses entropy. He points out that there’s a sense in which it’s incorrect to say we eat food because we need the energy it contains. The conservation of energy means that it is neither created nor destroyed; we are radiating energy constantly, at pretty much the same rate that we absorb it. The difference is that the heat energy we radiate is a high-entropy form of energy, meaning it’s disordered. The chemical energy we absorb is a low-entropy form of energy, meaning it’s ordered. In effect, we are consuming order and generating disorder; we live by increasing the disorder of the universe. It’s only because the universe started in a highly ordered state that we are able to exist at all.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“The universe began as an enormous breath being held.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“our every utterance will reduce the amount of air left for thought and bring us closer to the moment when our thoughts cease altogether. Will it be preferable to remain mute to prolong our ability to think, or to talk until the very end? I don’t know.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“It is not that the turret clocks are running faster. What is happening is that our brains are running slower.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“Baghdad of my own day. I knew it was foolhardy; men of experience say, “Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity,”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“Anyone who has wasted hours surfing the Internet knows that technology can encourage bad habits.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“The researchers conclude that there’s something missing in the Origami genome, but as far as Derek’s concerned, the fault lies with them. They’re blind to a simple truth: complex minds can’t develop on their own. If they could, feral children would be like any others. And minds don’t grow the way weeds do, flourishing under indifferent attention; otherwise all children in orphanages would thrive. For a mind to even approach its full potential, it needs cultivation by other minds. That cultivation is what he’s trying to provide for Marco and Polo.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“Even if a universes's life span is calculable , the variety of life that is generated within it is not. The buildings we have erected, the art and music and verse we have composed, the very lives we've led: none of them could have been predicted, because none of them was inevitable... The fact that it {universe} spawned such plenitude is a miracle...”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“And then, our universe will be in a state of absolute equilibrium. All life and thought will cease and, with them, time itself.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“Though I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to you a valediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have a right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.”
― Ted Chiang, נשיפה

“The branch where you're having a bad day and keep the extra change is one that split off in the past; your actions can't affect it anymore. But if you act compassionately in this branch, that's still meaningful, because it has an affect on the branches that will split off in the future. The more often you make compassionate choices, the less likely it is that you'll be making selfish choices in the future, even in the branches where you're having a bad day.'

'That sounds good, but--' Nat thought about how years of acting a certain way could wear ruts in a person's brain, so that they would keep slipping into the same habits without trying to. 'But it's not easy,' said Nat.

'I know it's not,' said Dana. 'But the question was, given that we know about other branches, whether making good choices is worth doing. I think it absolutely is. None of us are saints, but we can all try to be better. Each time you do something generous, you're shaping yourself into someone who's more likely to be generous next time, and that matters.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“Because I think there are events of another category that are likewise not fixed in a causal chain: acts of volition. Free will is a kind of miracle; when we make a genuine choice”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“forgetful about completing errands the other person requested? I was no expert on marriage, but I knew what marriage counselors said: pinpointing blame wasn’t the answer. Instead, couples needed to acknowledge each other’s feelings and address their problems as a team.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“positioning Remem as more than a handy virtual assistant: they want it to take the place of your natural memory.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“Now Whetstone aims to change all of that; they claim Remem’s algorithms can search the haystack by the time you’ve finished saying “needle.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“So it hasn’t been my habit to engage in doomsaying whenever a new product is announced; I’ve welcomed new technology as much as anyone. But when Whetstone released its new search tool Remem, it raised concerns for me in a way none of its predecessors did. Millions of people, some my age but most younger, have been keeping lifelogs for years, wearing personal cams that capture continuous video of their entire lives.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“Data Earth’s physics simulation is nowhere near good enough for that—”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation