“Once I know that I can remember
whenever I like, I forget.”
—Umberto Eco
“Once I know that I can remember whenever I like, I forget.”
—Umberto Eco
You need to set up systems and tricks that get you to think about your projects and situations more frequently, more easily, and in more depth.
David Allen, Getting Things Done
He regretted the new distance between them only slightly less than he would have regretted not saying anything at all.
James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes
Julie was the kind of woman who would sacrifice for a cause, but not the kind who’d take joy in reading the propaganda.
James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes
This is the word—“politics”—that nerds use whenever they feel impatient about the human realities of an organization.
Neal Stephenson, Seveneves
Idealist that you are, young as you are, you can have no idea just how easy it is for people to deceive themselves.
Ann Leckie, Ancillary Sword
Maybe Strigan had been right, and Seivarden had decided the most profitable course, for now, was to not alienate the person who was feeding her, and that would change as soon as her options changed.
Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice
I didn’t look back. I didn’t care if she followed me or not, hoped, in fact, she wouldn’t. I could certainly have no continued sense of responsibility, no fears that without me she would be helpless. She could take care of herself.
Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice
I can think of worse fates. I could end up playing happy families with a middle-aged banker.
Greg Egan, Permutation City
She could see how easy it would be, now, to break things off permanently. And now that it had reached that stage, it seemed like the obvious thing to do. She wasn’t upset, or relieved–just calm. It always made her feel that way: burning bridges, driving people away. Simplifying her life.
Greg Egan, Permutation City
Wild-eyed, choking clerks stampeded through the passages full of smoke, silk hats and elderly business men could be seen rolling independently down the stairs.
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale
He made so many people uneasy. Everyone was always very friendly toward him, and no one was ever very nice; everyone spoke to him, and no one ever said anything.
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Doubts of such kind gnawed at the chaplain’s lean, suffering frame insatiably. Was there a single true faith, or a life after death? How many angels could dance on the head of a pin, and with what matters did God occupy himself in all the infinite aeons before the Creation? Why was it necessary to put a protective seal on the brow of Cain if there were no other people to protect him from? Did Adam and Eve produce daughters? These were the great, complex questions of ontology that tormented him. Yet they never seemed nearly as crucial to him as the question of kindness and good manners. He was pinched perspinngly in the epistemological dilemma of the skeptic, unable to accept solutions to problems he was unwilling to dismiss as unsolvable. He was never without misery, and never without hope.
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
For a few precarious seconds, the chaplain tingled with a weird, occult sensation of having experienced the identical situation before in some prior time or existence. He endeavored to trap and nourish the impression in order to predict, and perhaps even control, what incident would occur next, but the afatus melted away unproductively, as he had known beforehand it would. Déjà vu. The subtle, recurring confusion between illusion and reality that was characteristic of paramnesia fascinated the chaplain, and he knew a number of things about it. He knew, for example, that it was called paramnesia, and he was interested as well in such corollary optical phenomena as jamais vu, never seen, and presque vu, almost seen. There were terrifying, sudden moments when objects, concepts and even people that the chaplain had lived with almost all his life inexplicably took on an unfamiliar and irregular aspect that he had never seen before and which made them totally strange: jamais vu. And there were other moments when he almost saw absolute truth in brilliant flashes of clarity that almost came to him: presque vu.
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
When you talk to the man upstairs, I want you to tell Him something for me. Tell Him it ain’t right for people to die when they’re young. I mean it. Tell Him if they got to die at all, they got to die when they’re old. I want you to tell Him that. I don’t think He knows it ain’t right, because He’s supposed to be good and it’s been going on for a long, long time. Okay?
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
The God I don’t believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He’s not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be.
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
