Quotes from Greg Egan

The Aleph moment would be followed, on a timescale of seconds, by the degeneration of physics into pure mathematics. Just as the Big Bang implied pre-space before it – an infinitely symmetric roiling abstraction where nothing really existed or happened – the Aleph moment would bring on the informational mirror image, another infinite wasteland without time or space.

In a human, or a Copy being run in the usual way, the physics of brain or computer meant that the state of mind at any one moment directly influenced the state of mind that followed

This was her last chance at the closest thing to freedom: her will, her actions, and the outcome in the world could all be in harmony.

If you're not prepared to perform the experiment yourself, at least think about the implications. Imagine that you've modified the way in which you're computed – and imagine what the consequences would be. A gedanken experiment – is that too much to ask for? In a sense, that's all I ever performed myself.

she believed that houses were meant to be thought of as vehicles – physically fixed, but logically mobile

That's all I am, now. That's all that defines me. So when they're happy, they'll be me.

He tried to dredge up the familiar, comforting truths: The Copy would survive, it would live his life for him. This body was always destined to perish; he'd accepted that long ago. Death was the irreversible dissolution of the personality; this wasn't death, it was a shedding of skin. There was nothing to fear.

Do you mean, that will be enough to satisfy you – or do you intend making a conscious decision to be satisfied?" She

If the technology improves sufficiently, the environmental impact of the wealthiest Copy could end up being less than that of the most ascetic living human. Who'll have the high moral ground, then? We'll be the most ecologically sound people on the planet.

They floated for a while, two flesher-shaped creatures and a giant worm in a cloud of spinning metal fragments, an absurd collection of imaginary debris, glinting by the light of the true stars.

Do you mean, that will be enough to satisfy you – or do you intend making a conscious decision to be satisfied?

Isn't that what the Peerless is for? Anything too difficult for the home world?

Often when she thought she was reading his body

Rakesh said, 'What do the Aloof think we can do with this, that they can't do themselves?' 'Give a damn?' Parantham suggested.

Who exactly am I saving from shame, when I'll live and die in every possible way?

I have other time frames to worry about besides yours!

Francesca said, "But don't you see? We talk about God for the simple reason that we still want to. There's a deeply ingrained human compulsion to keep using that word, that concept – to keep honing it, rather than discarding it – despite the fact that it no longer means what it did five thousand years ago.

He turned back to face them. 'I do make sense to you, don't I? I'm not just imagining that communication is taking place?

A matter of pragmatism; chemically knocking someone senseless is usually quieter, less messy and less risky to the assailant than killing them.

If I'd said that to my sensible, smutty, twelve-year-old self, he would have laughed until he hemorrhaged

Peer shook his head. "What have I become, already? An endless series of people – all happy for their own private reasons. Linked together by the faintest thread of memory. Why keep them spread out in time? Why go on pretending that there's one 'real' person, enduring through all those arbitrary changes?

If Zendegi was a frivolous indulgence, well, it was there alongside every other beautiful, forbidden thing that her contemporaries have risked their lives to regain

Evolution was a random walk across a minefield, not a pre-ordained trajectory, onward and upward toward "perfection.

You know, in formal logic, an inconsistent set of axioms can be used to prove anything at all. Once you have a single contradiction, A and not A, there's nothing you can't derive from it.