Exhalation Quotes
"A man can hope for no greater blessing as long as he lives."
"My heart was troubled, and neither the purchase of luxuries nor the giving of alms was able to soothe it."
"The marvel of its presentation would not exceed that of the events recounted."
"This is not mere sleight of hand. The right side of the hoop precedes the left by several seconds."
"You have created something truly astonishing."
"The future is fixed, then? As unchangeable as the past?"
"There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough."
"Pretend that you have free will. It’s essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don’t."
"Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has."
"You’re right, it is. For SaruMech’s sake, though, I hope the experience translates well onto video."
"We could expose them to lots of different things and see what they have an aptitude for."
"It’s nice to be reminded that his earlier work is bearing fruit."
"That’s terrific, but it’s a far cry from being able to make responsible decisions about one’s future."
"Remember, I told you your voice might sound different in the outside world."
"People always say that we’re evolved to want babies."
"The important thing is that he hasn’t acted on his feelings for Ana."
"For most customers, all this means is that they can travel between more virtual locations without logging out and in again."
"Origami and Fabergé digients experience the migration to Real Space as an expansion of possibilities."
"So you tried a little more, and now we have to buy a new wrist, and a new display tile."
"The problem is not just that all the humans have moved to Real Space."
"Researchers ran test suites before they uploaded mice?"
"The vast majority of sex dolls are still controlled by conventional software to enact scripted scenarios."
"How else are you going to raise the money you need?"
"What makes us so sure we shouldn’t? Suppose one day Jax says to you he understands what he’d be getting into."
"Children are not born sinful, but become so because of the influence of those whose care we have placed them in."
"Perfecting this machine means other parents will be able to raise their children in a more rational environment than I was able to provide for my own."
"The most catastrophic one was when Nicole’s mother, Angela, declared that she deserved a more interesting life."
"Lifelogs are the most complete photo album imaginable, but like most photo albums, they lie dormant except on special occasions."
"When the public interest is involved, finding out what actually happened is important; justice is an essential part of the social contract, and you can’t have justice until you know the truth."
"But even that thrill can’t compare to that inspired by examining samples of wood a few centuries older. Because in those tree trunks, there’s a point at which the growth rings stop."
"If humans ever detect the Arecibo message being sent back to Earth, they will know someone is trying to get their attention."
"Speaking as a member of a species that has been driven nearly to extinction by humans, I can attest that this is a wise strategy."
"A man doesn’t speak only one thing. If Batur and Iorkyaha were here, they would agree with me that we should join with the Kwande clan."
"We don’t simply cry out. We pronounce. We enunciate."
"I turned myself around. Our relationship didn’t improve overnight, but over the years I was able to work myself back into Nicole’s good graces."
"When a man speaks, we make marks on the paper. When another man looks at the paper later, he sees the marks and knows what sounds the first man made."
"This doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind about the downsides of digital memory; there are many, and people need to be aware of them."
"And if you think I’ve been less than honest, tell me. I want to know."
"You’re assuming that if you hadn’t activated the prism, your niece would have gotten accepted. But that’s not necessarily true."
"If we looked, I’m sure we could find a hundred people whose prisms connect a branch where your niece was rejected. If the same thing happens in branches where you acted differently, then you aren’t the cause."
"We like the idea that there’s always someone responsible for any given event, because that helps us make sense of the world."
"Not everything is under our control, or even anyone’s control."
"Whenever astronomers peer at one more closely, they confirm that it’s identical in size and composition to every other, and to what end?"
"The idea that her father might be experiencing a crisis of faith seemed incredible to me; as a scientist, he was the last person to have reason to doubt."
"What if God had no intentions about us at all?"
"They’re just random results of the weather being different between the two branches."
"You know it tells the truth because you can feel it."
"That’s what society needs us to do, not to follow rules without thinking."
"I’ve devoted my life to studying the wondrous mechanism that is the universe, and doing so has given me a sense of fulfillment."
"It was as if, before that night, Vinessa had been balanced on a knife’s edge; she could have become either what society considered a good girl or a bad girl."
"Dana knew Vinessa was taking advantage of her feelings of guilt, but it didn’t matter. Dana was guilty. She owed her."
"Each time you do something generous, you’re shaping yourself into someone who’s more likely to be generous next time, and that matters."
"Every decision you make contributes to your character and shapes the kind of person you are."
"I keep thinking about the randomness of this murder... but now I’m wondering, are the people who say that actually right?"
"But recently I had this…this opportunity to do something actually nice for another person... I imagined what a better person might do, and I did that instead."
"There are people I’ve hurt that I’ll probably never be able to make amends to. They’ll never give me the chance, and I can’t blame them."
"I feel good about what I did, but it’s not like I deserve a medal or anything. Because there are other people for whom being generous comes easily, without a struggle."