Spin
Robert Charles Wilson
Top 10 Best Quotes
“There are so many kinds of time. The time by which we measure our lives. Months and years. Or the big time, the time that raises mountains and makes stars. Or all the things that happen between one heartbeat and the next. Its hard to live in all those kinds of times. Easy to forget that you live in all of them.”
“We're all born strangers to ourselves and each other, and we're seldom formally introduced.”
“We're as ephemeral as raindrops. We all fall, and we all land somewhere.”
“Stick out your arms," he'd say, "straight out at your sides," and when he had you in the appropriate cruciform position he'd say, "Left index finger to right index finger straight across your heart, that's the history of the Earth. You know what human history is? Human history is the nail on your right-hand index finger. Not even the whole nail. Just that little white part. The part you clip off when it gets too long. That's the discovery of fire and the invention of writing and Galileo and Newton and the moon landing and 9/11 and last week and this morning. Compared to evolution we're newborns. Compared to geology, we barely exist”
“Words like anchors, tethering boats of memory that would otherwise be settled by the storm.”
“Ars moriendi ars vivendi est: the art of dying is the art of living.”
“But the world is what it is and won’t be bargained with.”
“The conversation was mesmerizing, not for its content but for the cadences of the talk, the rhythm we fell into when we were alone, now as before. Every conversation between friends or lovers creates its own easy or awkward rhythms, hidden talk that runs like a subterranean river under even the most banal exchange.”
“When people come to understand how big the universe is and how short a human life is, their hearts cry out. Sometimes it’s a shout of joy: I think that’s what it was for Jason; I think that’s what I didn’t understand about him. He had the gift of awe. But for most of us it’s a cry of terror. The terror of extinction, the terror of meaninglessness. Our hearts cry out. Maybe to God, or maybe just to break the silence.”
“Fifteen minutes shy of two o’clock. The thick of the night. The zone of lost objectivity.”
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Book Keywords:
conversation, friendship, time, love, life-and-death, latin, philosophy, living
