That fruitful miracle

a literary blog

[tuckoo]

His sense of his own body had changed, shifted, expanded past anything he'd imagined before. The simple extent of it was numbing. He felt the stars within him. With a thought, he could pull his attention to a sun surrounded by unfamiliar planets like he was attending to his finger or the back of his neck. The lights all tasted different, smelled different. He wanted to close his eyes against the flood of sensation, but he couldn't. He didn't have anything so simple as eyes. He had become immeasurably large, and rich, and strange. Thousands of voices, millions, billions, lifted in chorus and he was their song. And at his center, a place where all the threads of his being came together. He recognized the station not by how it looked, but by the deep throb of its heartbeat. The power of a million suns contained, channeled. Here was the nexus that sat between worlds, the miracle of knowledge and power that gave him heaven. His Babel.

"Abaddon's Gate," by James S.A. Corey

[tuckoo]

That’s what you want, isn’t it?” With his wrist, Filavandrel wiped away the sweat above his white brows. “Is that what you want to impose on others? The conviction that your time has come, your human era and age, and that what you’re doing to other races is as natural as the rising and the setting of the sun? That everybody has to come to terms with it, to accept it? And you accuse me of vanity? And what are the views you’re proclaiming? Why don’t you humans finally realize that your domination of the world is as natural and repellant as lice in a sheepskin coat? You could propose we cohabit with lice and get the same reaction—and I’d listen to the lice as attentively if they, in return for our acknowledgement of their supremacy, were to agree to allow common use of the coat.

“The Last Wish: Introducing the Witcher,” by Andrzej Sapkowski

[tuckoo]

In the movies, some foreboding music might play in the background, or the light might dim. But there was none of that. Evil has an ordinary face. It laughs. It cries. It deflects. It rationalizes. It makes great pasta.

by James Comey, on having espresso and dinner with a mass murderer in the mafia, From A Higher Loyalty

[tuckoo]

I valued them because they would always tell me the truth, including when I was full of it. The danger in every organization, especially one built around hierarchy, is that you create an environment that cuts off dissenting views and discourages honest feedback, that can quickly lead to a culture of delusion and deception. In a leader, the tendency of too much confidence to swamp humility can lead to a dangerous self-indulgence at the expense of others.

A Higher Loyalty, by James Comey

[tuckoo]

9.3.88.32.025: The cucumber and the tomato are both fruit; the avocado is a nut. To assist with the dietary requirements of vegetarians, on the first Tuesday of the month a chicken is officially a vegetable.

Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde

[tuckoo]

Silence is not what I should choose, yet it suits me better than a lie.

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin

[tuckoo]

It's found on Earth, and on Hain-Davenant, and on Chiffewar. It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness...how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself, Therem. Both and one. A shadow on snow.

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin

[tuckoo]

There is neither source nor end, for all things are in the Center of Time. As all the stars may be reflected in a round raindrop falling in the night: so too do all the stars reflect the raindrop. There is neither darkness nor death, for all things are, in the light of the Moment, and their end and their beginning are one.

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin

[tuckoo]

Darkness is only in the mortal eye, that thinks it sees, but sees not.

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin

[tuckoo]

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin

[tuckoo]

'The unknown,' said Faxe's soft voice in the forest, 'the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. No Handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods, nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion...Tell me Genry, what is known? What is sure, predictable, inevitable--the one certain thing you known concerning your future, and mine?' 'That we shall die.' 'Yes. There's really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer...the only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not known what comes next.'

From The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin

[tuckoo]

No, I don't mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression. It grows in us, that fear. It grows in us year by year. We've followed our road too far.

From The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin

[tuckoo]

...Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling: like that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one wears it and, worn by another, dulls and goes to dust.

From The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin

[tuckoo]

In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.

Hyperion, by Dan Simmons

[tuckoo]

You think, it's like a brain fire. Like a rodent gnawing at you from the inside. A knife in your gut. A spiral. Whirlpool. Black hole. The words used to describe it–despair, fear, anxiety obsession–do so little to communicate it. Maybe we invented metaphor as a response to pain. Maybe we needed to give shape to the opaque, deep-down pain that evades both sense and senses.

From “Turtles All the Way Down,” by John Green

[tuckoo]

I was so good at being a kid, and so terrible at being whatever I was now.

From “Turtles All the Way Down,” by John Green

[tuckoo]

Sociologically, ubiquitous computing may mean the decline of the computer addict...Most important, ubiquitous computing will help overcome the problem of information overload.

From "The Computer for the 21st Century, by Mark Weiser, 1991