The void is my friend.
A fair system only works if there’s an unbiased means of assessing merit. When there is no pride or selfishness involved.
page 280, The Will of the Many by James Islington
Everyone knew that the nicer a library was, the better the work you did within it. Nice libraries meant donors, meant support, meant the time and resources to accumulate the best collections. More important, nice libraries put you in a certain frame of mind. You could unpack the precise same set of archives in the Rad Cam or a nondescript warehouse, and still you’d do better work in the Rad Cam. The atmosphere mattered. You became the thinker the library expected you to be. Nice libraries whispered: Everyone who has passed through here is very important, and so are you.
page 83, Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
When the ancestors of humans and heptapods first acquired the spark of consciousness, they both perceived the same physical world, but they parsed their perceptions differently; the worldviews that ultimately arose were the end result of that divergence. Humans had developed a sequential mode of awareness, while heptapods had developed a simultaneous mode of awareness. We experienced events in an order, and perceived their relationship as cause and effect. They experienced all events at once, and perceived a purpose underlying them all. A minimizing, maximizing purpose.
page 134, Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
“Would you not argue with me for once?” Elias said with a flush. “Listen here, Miss Ettings! I am in love with you. You deserve to hear that. I love your wit and cleverness. I love that you are kind but almost never nice. I love your eyes and your hair and your freckles, and that fact that you smell like some monstrous floral perfume all of the time.” He paused, now looking somewhat offended at himself. “And I love to dance with you. That is the worst of it by far.”
page 235, Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater
Nick laughed, and I wondered if if that was what love was, making someone forget the pain that gnawed at them and would not stop.
page 152, The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo