There is a paradox at the heart of the art of fiction, at least as I’ve experienced it: while the medium of fiction is language, a technology whose primary purpose is communication, I can only write satisfying fiction by eschewing the communicative purpose. An explanation. As the author, I construct an artifact out of words, but the words are meaningless until they’re animated by the consciousness of the reader. The story is co-told by the author and the reader, and every story is incomplete until a reader comes along and interprets it. Each reader comes to the text with their own interpretive frameworks, assumptions about reality, background narratives concerning how the world is and ought to be. These are acquired through experience, through every individual’s unique history of encounters with irreducible reality. The plausibility of plot is judged against these battle-scars; the depth of characters is measured against these phenomenon-shadows; the truth vel non of each story is weighed with the fears and hopes residing in each heart. - P100
Yet, experience has shown that it is when I am least aiming to communicate that the result is most open to interpretation; that it is when I am least solicitous of the comfort of my readers that they are mostly likely to make the story their home. Only by focusing purely on the subjective do I have a chance at achieving the intersubjective. - P109
It is more like the absence of substance, a rip in the murky interior of the cabinet, a negative object that consumes darkness and turns it into light. - P339
The alien city was a perfect circle about ten kilometers in diameter. From the air, the buildings—cubes around the edge of the city, cones, pyramids, tetrahedra in the middle—were forbidding spikes. Ring-shaped streets divided the city into concentric sections. - P383
I remember being Reborn. It felt the way I imagine a fish feels as it’s being thrown back into the sea. - P49
I press the trigger in my hand. Lauren had given it to me before I left. A last gift from my old self, from me to me. I imagine my spine exploding into a million little pieces a moment before it does. I imagine all the pieces of me, atoms struggling to hold a pattern for a second, to be a coherent illusion. - P75
He felt feverish and delirious. He imagined the merciless rays cutting into him, the residual heat of a dead civilization. But he was not afraid or sad or angry. Even as they were dying, the people of Pi Baeo strove to save those who would come after them. He was doing the same now for his daughter. This was a story that would always mean something, a message worth passing on, even in a universe that was cold, dark, and dying. - P407
He discreetly wiped his eyes. It was the first time she had called him Dad. He looked at Maggie, and the feeling of being responsible for her was not heavy at all. It felt like a pair of wings. "Nothing. The wind." - P398
I had once thought the Singularity would solve all our problems. Turns out it’s just a simple hack for a complicated problem. We do not share the same histories; we do not all want the same things. I am not so different from my mother after all. - P374
Someone has plucked the strings that weave together the fabric of space, sending a sequence of pulses down every strand of Indra’s web, connecting the farthest exploding nova to the nearest dancing quark. - P378
I want to tell her that I understand her impulse to make one life grand, her need to dim the sun with her love, her striving to solve intractable problems, her faith in a technical solution even though she knew it was imperfect. I want to tell her that I know we’re flawed, but that doesn’t mean we’re not also wondrous. - P381
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