"Maybe your empathy's just a comforting lie, you ever think of that? Maybe you think you know how the other person feels but you're only feeling yourself, maybe you're even worst than me. Or maybe we'r..."
- Peter Watts
"Perfection’s unattainable but it isn’t unapproachable."
"The Zodiac had rearranged itself into a precise grid of bright points with luminous tails. It was as though the whole planet had been caught in some great closing net, the knots of its mesh aglow with..."
"Dogs are always going to come up short if you insist on defining them as a weird kind of cat."
"Transcendence is transformation."
"Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors."
"But when the flash flood crosses your path, when the lion leaps at you from the grasses, advanced self-awareness is an unaffordable indulgence. The brain stem does its best."
"What’s the difference between being dead, and just not knowing you’re alive?"
"Pack animals always tear apart the weaklings in their midst. Every child knows that much instinctively."
"Everything’s an act. Everything’s strategy."