Exordia Quotes

“Would you send Batman to therapy? No, you would not, because then he could not punch crime.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“There are seven passions in the universe, Ssrin tells her. Seven patterns which appear again and again, across species, across time and space. There are many ideas about why. She shares none of them. She only names the passions for Anna. Preyjest is the chasing passion, the hunting passion. (Her heads show Anna: one slithering up another’s neck, reaching for it with a forked tongue-tip. At the last instant the other slips away.) Prajna is the lonely passion. The need for truth. One star in the dark, trying to brighten. Caryatasis is the dream of all disciples. The passion that binds students to their teacher. It happens when one soul changes many, and many change toward the one. Geashade hurts in the end, and cannot be ended without the hurt. Hesper is the warmth of a need unexpectedly met. Generosity from a stranger. Love from a friend. It is associated with silence: things said without speaking. Rath is the passion which stole gravity’s strength. Like gravity it draws things together to clash, and leaves scars shaped like the enemy. Serendure is the last and greatest. It is the unbreakable bond which may be trust and may be dependence. It persists whether it is wanted or not. It is like the force which binds quarks together: stronger when it is pulled. Each passion, Ssrin says, is a relationship between souls. Souls are the letters that make these words.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“I’m glad you exist. I want you to feel glad too.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“only weasels play trolley games. Heroes jump down there and start pulling people off the tracks. Heroes pass laws regulating better trolley brakes. That’s how you make a society.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“doubt usually underlies all true information. Lies are the only certain things in the mind.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“Maybe Jesus had no bacteria in his body, being the Son of Man, virgin-born from the immaculately conceived Mary. But then Jesus would’ve had diarrhea.)”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“people don’t like it when you’re too many things at once.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“There is a thing. A dark angular presence that recedes all the way to the vanishing point. Like a bad polygon drawn by an overheating graphics card, a sunset shadow on an infinite plain.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“The Ubiet’s stored on a drop rack. Go straight ahead ten meters, grip the lever on that console, and pull. The ship will release the rack. Grab the Ubiet and get out. Don’t worry about what it looks like—you’re fated to choose it correctly.” “Why!” “Conservation of parsimony. If you didn’t get it on the first try you’d have to try again, which is redundant. The Ubiet can influence free will to create cleaner narrative trajectories. It wants to help you use”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“She does a lot of disruption, but not in the cool tech-fucko sense: repeatedly and egregiously she will say, this is stupid, you are stupid, and I refuse to do it until you convince me otherwise;”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“Li’s working in some environment Chaya doesn’t recognize, not Matlab or Octave or even thrice-accursed R (may it be struck from all memory).”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“It is the fulcrum that lets the lever of your anger move the world: knowing that what happened didn’t just wrong you, it wronged everyone, everywhere, forever”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“Doing the morally right thing doesn’t have to make you stupid. Morally righteous decisions are usually smart decisions, because they require you to go the extra mile, do your diligence, build trust, consider the people around you, follow the rules, rules which exist for a reason. And hope is usually smart too. Because hope allows you to look for long-odds reversals, when all the smart safe plays are just gonna slow your defeat.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“Chaya wants to disassemble her and catalogue all her pieces and put her back together, just to know what the fuck is going on inside her, but she knows that if she did she would end up with one bit leftover, an indecipherable huh? of unclear function.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“People are just … books. They dry out, they tear, they snap at the spine. They rot in the dark. You leave them alone and they stop meaning anything at all.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“Because if star travel is so easy that it can be achieved in three days—or less, depending how long it took them to detect Blackbird’s appearance—then the galaxy is full, and species must compete over limited space and resources. The material conditions dictate it. We must assume that subjugation or extermination are the normal result of first contact.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“In 1988,” she says, “all the gods watched the villagers’ bodies burning and spitting. But they inclined their heads toward those fires only to light the cigarettes on their lips.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“What would you think if I said that, by cosmic coincidence, your species is destined to liberate the galaxy?” “I would call total bullshit. The inbred porn apes? No way. We can’t even save ourselves.” “Good. You’re learning. The story of man is a story of mediocrity.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“Anna lies there paralyzed in night terror, crushed by the knowledge that this thing is an abomination, a curse upon all those who see it, a mistake the universe wishes it could correct.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“Anna, I came to Earth tracking a very old story, a story that goes back to the dawn of time. It’s very unlikely that you’ll die right now. It wouldn’t be narratively complete.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“Can you comfort anyone with a ratio? Can you tell them for every one of you sad shits over there, there are a whole lot of happy people over here?”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“All of human thought and language is about creating low-entropy approximations of a high-entropy world. If it were not possible to do this, everyone's name would need to be as complicated as the person it named. Every thought would be as large as the thing it described.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“The proto-nerd often believes that awareness is the way to control, but in fact awareness only makes you aware of your powerlessness. And if you do not accept that powerlessness it can so easily become hate.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“I’m not obliged to make any sense to you!”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“If the world gender pay gap were as big as the gap between the strength of gravity and the weak nuclear force, then for every dollar made by a man, women would entirely cease to exist”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“men are disappointed by one another’s failures, but surprised by women’s success.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“You know I’m not saying that. Please, assume my good faith. It’ll save time. The world is at stake.”

“For some of us there are bigger things than the world.”

“Like the mathematical truth of existence?”

“Like the fate of our souls. You keep saying, The world will end if you don’t do what I want. But maybe doing what you want is worse than the end of the world. Maybe that’s why we have religion, did you ever think that? So that we can do the right thing even when there’s no good worldly reason.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“Nepantla, Rosamaria says, as she turns, without self-consciousness, to face him. That’s the word for being in a place between two places. She touches her wide, flat nose. I am a crossroads inhabited by whirlwinds. That’s what Anzaldûa wrote, about being inside and outside at the same time. A place you come to, but which is always moving. A nepantlera is someone who moves between selves. Am I the good Mexican girl who goes to Mass and prays to la virgencita? Am I the good assimilated girl who doesn’t have an accent? Am I the sad messed-up girl whose mom left so now she has sex under a porch? Am I a poor girl who cares about poor Mexicans? Am I a feminist who cares about women? Who gets my solidarity? I want the answer to be “everyone.” But people don’t like it when you’re too many things at once.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“On summer nights she’d haul her telescope out and search the heavens for some bright distance to distract her. How do you use a telescope when you’re illiterate? The same way you use a gun.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“Anna looks down at herself. She’s child-bodied no more. This is the Anna who came after the choice. Who lived with it for year after horrible burdened year.
She doesn’t want to live with it anymore.
But Mom waited so long to see her again.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia