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Too Like the Lightning

Book by Ada Palmer · 7 quotes · Blood, Boys, Evasion

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Too Like the Lightning Quotes

“I don’t like boys.” I shook my head. “That’s no impediment to them. Madame raised gentlemen of both sexes.”

Boys Gentlemen Sexes

Book:Too Like the Lightning

Source: Too Like the Lightning

“That’s the thing about gore, Bridger, if you don’t let yourself look at it then your imagination twists it in your mind and makes it into a kind of nightmare instead of letting you learn from it. You have to look at it, see what they did exactly, blood for blood, or you’ll never understand it.”

Psychology Violence Blood Gore Psychopaths Psychopathy

Book:Too Like the Lightning

Source: Too Like the Lightning

“Bryar Kosala just likes helping people, and is good at running things, and when invited to become the world’s Mom she said, “Sure.”

Helping Organization Mothers

Book:Too Like the Lightning

Source: Too Like the Lightning

“Mr. Smith is a banker, Mrs. Christian is a nurse, as if those twenty or forty or sixty hours made the other hundred of each week nothing. How do you introduce yourself at parties, reader? Are you a cook? A hiker? A reader? A moviegoer?”

Book:Too Like the Lightning

Source: Too Like the Lightning

“What are humanity’s great dreams? To conquer the world? To split the atom? When Alexander spread his empire from the Mediterranean to India, we say he conquered the world, but he barely touched a quarter of it. We lie. We lie again when we say we split the atom. ‘Atom’ was supposed to be the smallest piece of matter—all we did is give that name to something we can split, knowing that there are quarks and tensors, other pieces smaller that we cannot touch, and only these deserve the title ‘atom.’ Man is more ambitious than patient. When we realize we cannot split a true atom, cannot conquer the whole Earth, we redefine the terms to fake our victory, check off our boxes and pretend the deed is done. Alexander conquered Earth, we tell ourselves, Rutherford split the atom, no need to try again. Lies.”

Self Delusion Lies We Tell Ourselves Human Endeavor

Book:Too Like the Lightning

Source: Too Like the Lightning

“Secrets pour out like water, even from a single hole”

Truth Secrets Evasion

Book:Too Like the Lightning

Source: Too Like the Lightning

“As when a mountain climber on some cloud-locked peak grows so weary that he forgets the world around him in the pain, and pull, and pain, and pull, aware of nothing but his muscles, fog, and stone, but then suddenly a bright wind sweeps the clouds aside, and there open the boundless blue heavens, the sentinel heads of mountains thrusting through the fog floor, and the climber gasps as he sees, sovereign up above, the terrible, all-giving Sun, so Carlyle gasped at the sight of Bridger. And so he should. So should we all.”

Book:Too Like the Lightning

Source: Too Like the Lightning