The true enemy of humanity was not Evil, an abstract idea personified by some sort of crimson-faced creature dancing in flames, but Chance, that smoky million-handed monster forever fitting its tiny fingers into the fissures of your life, working tear it apart, loosening the fatal screw, turning that first cell cancerous, sending lightning to strike the tree that you chose for shelter from the storm.

There’s no way for me to warn you about the terrible things that I know are going to happen.

Perhaps Phillip was just not interested in becoming stronger; perhaps it was not the exercise itself that mattered to him, but the experience of it. Maybe he wanted to set the tone of each morning by always trying, always failing, the consequent band of pain across his chest serving as a reminder of that failure to carry him through the day.

The thing about memories wasn’t that many of them inevitably faded, but that repeated recall of the ones you remembered burnished them into shining, gorgeous lies.

Being is always becoming; people change and stay the same. What is true for bodies is also true for selves: even the most honest person has many faces, none of which are false.

But here is what you need to understand – here is why you are in danger. Here is why you must speak, and why you must not allow us to speak for you. Because history is an act of continuous collective imagining, and the perception of truth is a constant, unending negotiation, with others, and with oneself when one is alone.

I want you to know that I’m just like you, and, just like you, sometimes I have a little trouble holding things together.

But I’m not saying that falsifiability makes science better; I’m saying it makes science good.

Science fiction is the fantasy that science always works.

It is nice enough to be a child, but it is far rarer, and much more precious, to no longer be young, and to truly feel young again.