Quotes from Ted Chiang

You, I hope, are one of those explorers. You, I hope, found these sheets of copper and deciphered the words engraved on their surfaces. And whether or not your brain is impelled by the air that once impelled mine, through the act of reading my words, the patterns that form your thoughts become an imitation of the patterns that once formed mine. And in that way I live again, through you.

You'll do what makes you happy, and that'll be all I ask for.

I've gone into the outside world to reobserve society. The sign language of emotion I once knew has been replaced by a matrix of interrelated equations. Lines of force twist and elongate between people, objects, institutions, ideas. The individuals are tragically like marionettes, independently animate but bound by a web they choose not to see; they could resist if they wished, but so few of them do. At

men of experience say, "Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.

experience isn't merely the best teacher; it's the only teacher.

He understood how life was an undeserved bounty, how even the most virtuous were not worthy of the glories of the mortal plane. For him the mystery was solved, because he understood that everything in life is love, even pain, especially pain.

Science is not just the search for the truth," he said. "It's the search for purpose.

Verba volant, scripta manent. In Tiv you would say, 'Spoken words fly away, written words remain.

My new language is taking shape. It is gestalt oriented, rendering it beautifully suited for thought, but impractical for writing or speech. It wouldn't be transcribed in the form of words arranged linearly, but as a giant ideogram, to be absorbed as a whole.

The prospect of living without interference, living in a world where windfalls and misfortunes were never by design, held no terror for him.

Loving someone means making sacrifices for them.

The hush of the night sky is the silence of a graveyard.

The answer was simple. It was the difference between sympathy and empathy. Carl

Right now each of us is a private oral culture. We rewrite our pasts to suit our needs and support the story we tell about ourselves. With our memories we are all guilty of a Whig interpretation of our personal histories, seeing our former selves as steps toward our glorious present selves.

Their righteousness could not save them from the consequences of their deeds.

I wish this didn't affect me so deeply. Would that we could choose the things that trouble us, but we can't.

I concede his greater ingenuity. It bodes well for his endeavor. Pragmatism avails a savior far more than aestheticism. I wonder what he intends to do after he's saved the world. I comprehend the Word, and the means by which it operates, and so I dissolve.

I think there are events of another category that are likewise not fixed in a causal chain: acts of volition. Free will is a kind of miracle; when we make a genuine choice, we bring about a result that cannot be reduced to the workings of physical law. Every act of volition is, like the creation of the universe, a first cause.

She, like many, had always thought that mathematics did not derive its meaning from the universe, but rather imposed some meaning onto the universe.

even if a universe's life span is calculable, the variety of life that is generated within it is not.

At that stage of your life, there'll be no past or future for you; until I give you my breast, you'll have no memory of contentment in the past nor expectation of relief in the future. Once you begin nursing, everything will be in reverse, and all will be right with the world. NOW is the only moment you'll perceive; you'll live in the present tense. In many ways, it's an enviable state.

Because there are other people for whom being generous comes easily, without a struggle. And it's easy for them because in the past they made a lot of little decisions to be generous. It was hard for me because I've made a lot of little decisions to be selfish in the past. So I'm the reason it's hard for me to be generous.

S]kill at debate isn't the same as maturity.

Ease of learning isn't the primary force in language evolution.