To feel oneself so tiny, so fragile, so inherently losable, was at first spiritually crushing. But, by the… — Alastair Reynolds
To feel oneself so tiny, so fragile, so inherently losable, was at first spiritually crushing. But, by the same token, this realisation was also strangely liberating: if an individual human existence meant so little, if one’s actions were so cosmically irrelevant, then the notion of some absolute moral framework made about as much sense as the universal ether. Measured against the infinite, therefore, people were no more capable of meaningful sin—or meaningful good—than ants, or dust.
Worlds barely registered sin. Suns hardly deigned to notice it. On the scale of solar systems and galaxies, it meant nothing at all. It was like some obscure subatomic force that simply petered out on those scales.
p. 84Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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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
Rashmika could tell when anyone around her was lying. But seeing through her own deceptions was another matter entirely.
p. 119
I’m fed up with everyone being lied to just because the administration thinks it’s in our best interests not to know all the facts.
p. 378
