# Quote — Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap

> The virus was not helping. He had hoped that it would, but the feelings it brought were too superficial. When he most needed their succour he could feel them for the paper-thin façades they were. Just because the virus was tickling the parts of his brain that produced feelings of religious experience didn’t mean he was able to turn off the other parts of his mind that recognised these feelings as having been induced artificially. He truly felt himself to be in the presence of something sacred, but he also knew, with total clarity, that this was due to neuroanatomy. Nothing was really with him: the organ music, the stained-glass windows in the sky, the sense of proximity to something huge and timeless and infinitely compassionate were all explicable in terms of neural wiring, firing potentials, synaptic gaps.

- Author: [Alastair Reynolds](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds.md)
- Book: [Absolution Gap](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/absolution-gap.md)
- Page: 136
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alastair_Reynolds#Absolution_Gap_(2003)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/absolution-gap/the-virus-was

## More from this book

> It was a glaring omission, a sign of cosmic sloppiness. Not even that, Vasko corrected himself. It was a sign of cosmic obliviousness. The universe didn’t know what was happening here. It didn’t know and it didn’t care. It didn’t even know that it didn’t know.

p. 627 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/absolution-gap/it-was-a-glaring.md)

> The church-sponsored archaeologists were the only ones who had any kind of overview of the entire haul of relics, and they were under intense pressure to ignore any evidence that conflicted with Quaicheist scripture. That was why Rashmika wrote them so many letters, and why their infrequent replies were always so evasive. She wanted an argument; she wanted to question the entire accepted view of the scuttlers. They wanted her to go away.

p. 166 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/absolution-gap/the-church-sponsored-archaeologists.md)

> Rashmika could tell when anyone around her was lying. But seeing through her own deceptions was another matter entirely.

p. 119 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/absolution-gap/rashmika-could-tell.md)