Ted Chiang Quotes
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Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.
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There have always been arguments showing that free will is an illusion: some based on hard physics, others based on pure logic.
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I started submitting stories for publication when I was about 15, but it was many years before I sold anything. I don't make my living writing science fiction, so in that sense, I'm still not a pro.
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We don't normally think of it as such, but writing is a technology.
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What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future. ... Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it.
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God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion.
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Centuries of their labor would not reveal to them any more of Creation than they already knew. Yet through their endeavor, men would glimpse the unimaginable artistry of Yahweh's work, in seeing how ingeniously the world had been constructed. By this construction, Yahweh's work was indicated, and Yahweh's work was concealed.
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When I was a kid, I figured I would be a physicist when I grew up, and then I would write science fiction on the side. The physicist thing didn't pan out, but writing science fiction on the side did.
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Just as seeing Heaven's light gave him an awareness of God's presence in all things in the mortal plane, so it has made him aware of God's absence in all things in Hell.
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The universe began as an enormous breath being held. I am glad that it did... until this great exhalation is finished, my thoughts live on.
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Probably the most formative experience was reading the 'Foundation' trilogy when I was about twelve years old. That wasn't the first science fiction I had ever read, but it's something that stands out in my memory as having had a big impact on me.
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The universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological.
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I can't recommend technical writing as a day job for fiction writers because it's going to be hard to write all day and then come home and write fiction.