“They dug too far into physics and it bit them. Physics will do that. It’s an ungrateful piece of shit. It’s… — Alastair Reynolds
“They dug too far into physics and it bit them. Physics will do that. It’s an ungrateful piece of shit. It’s a fickle lover that will always betray you. It courts you, gives you rewards, coughs up little treats like fire and the wheel, telescopes and the secret of starflight, makes you think you’re worth it, that you’re the special one, that you really, really matter to it.…All the while it’s saving up this nasty little truth: that every thought, every deed, every hope you’ve ever held is futile. That the universe will end, and forget itself. That there is no such thing as meaning.…
“Do you believe it?” Goma asked.
“Of course I believe it. Physics doesn’t give a damn about how we feel. It doesn’t give a damn about a sleeping soundly in our beds, thinking we matter.”
p. 577Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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
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
“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
