# Quote — Alastair Reynolds, Poseidon's Wake

> “I will say this, though—it’s a very odd thing not to be conscious. To be—to all intents and purposes—dead. Neither gathering nor generating information, as cold and changeless as eternity. How do you humans live with the thought of that hanging over every moment of your pitifully short existences?”
>
> “We don’t,” Kanu said. “We just get on with it.”

- Author: [Alastair Reynolds](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds.md)
- Book: [Poseidon's Wake](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/poseidons-wake.md)
- Page: 287
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alastair_Reynolds#Poseidon's_Wake_(2015)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/poseidons-wake/i-will-say

## More from this book

> Believe me, Kanu—the one thing you don’t do in emergencies is think things through. Thinking things through gets you a headstone and a nice epitaph. She thought things through. See how that worked out for her.

p. 601 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/poseidons-wake/believe-me-kanu-the.md)

> We have all made mistakes. The mark of intelligence is to learn from them, and not be bound by the errors of the past.

p. 437 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/poseidons-wake/we-have-all.md)

> “And when do we abandon negotiation and start hitting each other with increasingly large sticks?” Ru said.
>
> “Only when we’ve exhausted all the other options,” Vasin said.

p. 453 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alastair-reynolds/poseidons-wake/and-when-do-we-abandon.md)