#pro

I was bitterly resentful, but somehow greatly relieved. And I respected him enormously for his clarity of thought, his obvious caring, and his unwillingness to equivocate in delivering bad news. ↗

— Kay Redfield Jamison

#respect

The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something that works in all respects other than one, which is just that it is hopelessly improbable? Your instinct is to say, 'Yes, but he or she simply wouldn't do that. ↗

— Douglas Adams

#improbable #respect

The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence. ↗

— Nikola Tesla

#non-physical-phenomena #progress #science #science

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#science #thought-provoking #science

A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding. ↗

— Marshall McLuhan

#opinion #probes #social-science #understanding #wisdom

In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations. As with gossip, you can't be too surprised if important things turn up that were left out of the first-heard version entirely; or if points initially made much of turn out to have been distorted, or simply not to have happened at all. ↗

— Samuel R. Delany

#story #writing #writing-process #science

Armageddon was yesterday, today we have a serious problem. ↗

— Stieg Larsson

#larsson #lisabeth #millenium #problems

Butch hesitated. "Annabeth's okay. You gotta cut her some slack. She had a vision telling her to come here, to find a guy with one shoe. That was supposed to be the answer to her problem." "What Problem?" Piper asked. "She's been looking for one of our campers, who's been missing three days," Butch said. "She's going out of her mind with worry. She hoped he'd be here." "Who?" Jason asked. "Her boyfriend," Butch said, "A guy named Percy Jackson. ↗

— Rick Riordan

#percy-jackson #percy-jackson-and-the-olympians #the-lost-hero #problems

And this is the east shore?" Sadie asked. "You said something about that in London--my grandparents living on the east shore." Amos smiled. "Yes. Very good, Sadie. In ancient times, the east bank of the Nile was always the side of the living, the side where the sun rises. The dead were buried west of the river. It was considered bad luck, even dangerous, to live there. The tradition is still strong among... our people." Our people?" I asked, but Sadie muscled in with another question. So you can't live in Manhattan?" she asked. Amos's brow furrowed as he looked across at the Empire State Building. "Manhattan has other problems. Other gods. It's best we stay separate. ↗

— Rick Riordan

#percy-reference #problems

Everything starts somewhere, though many physicists disagree. But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of things. They wonder how the snowplough driver gets to work, or how the makers of dictionaries look up the spelling of words. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#problems