Mind Painter Quotes

“There were many slippery slopes to nihilism in this new world, and the higher up you were the easier it was to fall down one of them.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“There's nothing quite so terrifying as being unsure of your own sanity. All other concerns are downstream.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“...how can someone who may be losing his mind accurately assess his own sanity?”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“We stood on the shoulders of giants, but we fell off.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“Would intelligent life evolve again on this planet, and if so would it have the means—like opposable thumbs or a way to store knowledge outside of brains—to build technology? Dolphins could have lived for eternity and never developed the capability to annihilate their species or the world, much less colonize another.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“There's a brute fact at the end of every chain of causality. Some are just harder to accept than others. If you keep asking 'why' in any domain you eventually arrive at something that just seems to be true about reality, at least insofar as we understand it.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“But at this point I know I'm only remembering the last time I remembered, an increasingly distorted recursion reaching back in time.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“Once upon a time the only thing that couldn't be taken from someone under any circumstances was their own attitude and thoughts. A sufficiently trained and powerful mind could always take refuge in itself. But Keli knew all too well this was no longer the case; when you strip away the layers of abstraction we're merely chemical reactions and electric pulses, both of which can be manipulated.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“The electrified gas creating these vibrant displays was a distinct and oft-forgotten fourth phase of matter—plasma—that comprised more of the universe than all but matter's fifth phase: dark.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“The lights went down in the city, an artificial sun shining on the bay.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“Tragically ironic, isn't it? How nuclear weapons represent both our species' mastery over the very foundations of nature, as well as our utter inability to master our most primitive instincts.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“Theoretically the only tool you really needed to survive was a gun; everything else could be taken from others who lacked one.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“Like no small number of wealthy people he'd taken up an antiquated form of transportation as a hobby.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“How spectacularly things shine when viewed from the darkness...”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“A fate worse than death, in that it also included death at the end.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“The story of Noah’s Ark, if you’re familiar, left out the part where the animal kingdom is repopulated entirely through rampant incest.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“…a true utopia would have a one hundred percent suicide rate, where everyone dies precisely when and how they wish.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“There was no need to burn our ships upon arrival, like the explorers of old, to ensure the crew's dedication to the mission. Instead, we'd burned our home.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“A not-so-subtle reminder that anyone can lose everything at any time, though few think it will happen to them and none get the chance to realize it did when it does.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“But the surest way to live a worthwhile, meaningful life was to have already done so, those moments etched forever into the fabric of spacetime.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“...life is a war we all lose in the end, but every day is a battle, and you can sure as hell win some of those.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“With a fixed amount of matter and energy in the universe, everything is a zero-sum game on some level.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“I used to wish I’d have nightmares—what a pleasure it would have been to wake up. If all your dreams are terrifying, reality actually becomes something to look forward to.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“Chad was a twenty-six-year-old former developer of software used to develop more advanced software. He was now unemployed.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“So, this is how the world ends, eh? Not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a disgusting gurgling sound, he thought.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“He'd been younger then, when sex meant both nothing and everything.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter

“A society’s technological dependence increases exponentially over time, as does its helplessness when deprived of it.”
― Tom B. Night, Mind Painter