Solaris Quotes
"I stood, or rather hung suspended, in a bed of air, all of one piece with my metal shell."
"I waited for the stars to start smoking. I didn’t get to see it. They merely began to fade and disappear, dissolving against a reddening background."
"I hadn’t come all this way only to perish at my destination."
"Solaris Station. Zero and zero. Docking complete. Over and out."
"I stood beneath a silver funnel high as a nave."
"I don’t know you, I don’t know you, what do you want. . . ?"
"For a split second I felt a twinge of nausea in the pit of my stomach."
"The truth was, I really didn’t want to go in."
"In essence, the stakes are higher than exploring the civilization of Solaris; this is about us ourselves, about the limits of human cognition."
"Is a mountain a very large rock? Is a planet a huge mountain?"
"I hadn’t been traveling for sixteen months just to be brought to a halt by some playacting of yours!!"
"I must have gone mad, immediately after I landed."
"It’s not just in sickness; even in the most ordinary dream we find ourselves conversing with people we do not know in our waking life."
"Both lists of figures matched as I had predicted, to the fourth decimal place."
"So the calculator existed independently of me; this meant that the Station and everything on it was also real."
"I was not mad. The last ray of hope had faded."
"I’d carried out my calculations in a kind of silent doggedness that had been the only thing keeping me on my feet."
"I don’t know when I fell asleep; the light was still on."
"My first thought was: 'I’m glad this is one of those dreams where you know you’re dreaming.'"
"You poor little thing, you’ve come to visit me, huh?"
"All the same, I wished it would end. I need to get to work, after all."
"I have the feeling that I always have to... be able to see you."
"The terrible thoughts moving through my mind were growing more and more distinct."
"I was penetrated through and through, embraced without being touched."
"I was beyond fear and despair. I was further on; no one had ever gone that far."
"I wasn’t afraid of anything. I stopped struggling. I fell asleep almost immediately."
"It’s just a door, you know, they have these kind of doors here."
"I wasn’t afraid of it. I wasn’t afraid of anything."
"For quite a while, I think. Do you not want that?"
"That means that all the proteins, cells, cell nuclei—they’re all just a mask!"
"The actual structure responsible for the functioning of the ‘guest’ is hidden deeper."
"They are not persons, nor are they copies of specific individuals, but rather materialized projections of what our brain contains regarding a particular person."
"When we perform an experiment we learn from the results, in particular from our mistakes, so when we repeat it we introduce corrections."
"What does it mean? That it's not such a bad thing, because with you too, I'm not able to. . ."
"It's fear. I can't even say what it is I'm afraid of, because really I'm not afraid, I just lose myself."
"I don't think I have anything at all anymore. I'd prefer you to do it, but only so we can move forward, or at least look as if we are."
"Maybe tomorrow I'll turn into a green jellyfish? It doesn't depend on me."
"I want you to be here, with me, I don't need anything else!"
"She knows everything? Including that she was already here once before and that you—"
"If they could be broken, I'd smash them, I really would smash all of them!"
"In an inhuman situation you’re trying to behave like a human being. That may be admirable, but it’s also futile."
"We’re all sticking our heads in the sand here, Kelvin, but at least we’re aware of it and we’re not trying to act noble."
"The energy creates a warped stabilizing field. The question is, is that field external or is its source located inside the guest’s body?"
"Think about what kind of person you are. Who are you trying to make happy here? Or save? Yourself? Her?"
"Human beings set out to encounter other worlds, other civilizations, without having fully gotten to know their own hidden recesses, their blind alleys, well shafts, dark barricaded doors."
"As if worthiness was plodding forward and getting bogged down, and drowning in something you don’t understand and never will."
"The experiment wouldn’t do any good. Because if our neurophysiologists can’t read a recording, then how could this utterly alien, black, liquid monster..."
"Solaristics is the posthumous child of long-dead myths, the final flower of mystical yearnings that people no longer have the courage to utter aloud."
"The cornerstone hidden deep in the foundations of this edifice is the hope of Redemption."
"But there’s no room for any of that here. No room. Understand? No, you don’t want to understand. You refuse to understand."
"But this way. . . you can’t handle it and that’s why you’re having this discussion with me. . . and in fact with yourself!"
"You could go and give the ocean a good whipping, for example, to teach it a lesson."
"What if it’s impossible not to be, in this place? What then? You’ll rage in front of Snaut, who’s responsible for everything, huh?"
"But it was you talking with her the other night? You made her give me a sleeping draft for the. . . ? What have you done with her? Tell me!!"
"You’re thinking about human beings. . . This isn’t just poor philosophy, it’s even poor mysticism."