124 Quotes by Greg Egan

The environment was full of birds and insects, rodents and small reptiles – decorative in appearance, but also satisfying a more abstract aesthetic: softening the harsh radial symmetry of the lone observer; anchoring the simulation by perceiving it from a multitude of view-points. Ontological guy lines.

Isn’t that what the Peerless is for? Anything too difficult for the home world?

If Zendegi was a frivolous indulgence, well, it was there alongside every other beautiful, forbidden thing that her contemporaries have risked their lives to regain.

Paul counted – and for argument’s sake, tried to defend his own perspective, tried to imagine the outside world actually cycling through fragments of time drawn from ten distinct periods.

Is a stranger in a crowd less than human, just because you can’t witness her inner life?

We have a special name, here, for a certain kind of failure to defer to the greater good – for putting a personal sense of doing right above any objective measure of the outcome. It’s called ‘moral vanity’.

I don’t have any structured grand plan; I just intend to keep writing about the things that interest me-some of which change, some of which don’t.

Often when she thought she was reading his body.

No wonder most fleshers had stampeded into the polises, once they had the chance: if disease and aging weren’t reason enough, there was gravity, friction, and inertia. The physical world was one vast, tangled obstacle course of pointless, arbitrary restrictions.