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Meta Quotes

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Meta Quotes

“I gave her as much as I had, but it's like the difference between a movie and a book: A book lets you choose how much of the blood you want to see. A book gives you the permission to see the story as you want, as your mind directs. You interpret. Your Alexander Portnoy doesn't look like mine because we all have our unique view. When you finish a movie you leave the theater with your friend and talk about the movie right away. When you finish a book you think. Love grew up on movies and I have just read her a book. I give her time to digest.”

LiteratureImaginationBooksMetaphorComparisonMoviesMetaCaroline KepnesHidden Bodies
Book:Hidden Bodies
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“There are indeed many places where I could start. I might start with Rachel's tears, or Priscilla's. There is much shedding of tears in this story. In a complex explanation any order may seem arbitrary. Where after all does anything begin? That three of the four starting points I have mentioned were causally independent of each other suggests speculations, doubtless of the most irrational kind, upon the mystery of human fate.”

ChanceFateStorytellingIris MurdochBeginningThe Black PrinceMetaNarrator
Book:The Black Prince
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“Was I (am I not still?) a victim of words and books merely, and are books just an excuse for living, living things out in parenthesis, even in the most desolate stony place as I was, quotations and misquotations raining down on me thick and fast – words, words, words – the multitude of words, a parody of rain? For after all, as old Mrs Feany said, the rain is healthy. And the rain it raineth everyday. But the stuff of books and solitude and spying on the poor, could they be healthy? Or were my doubts the real heresy and treason? What book ever changed the world? It seems a solipsism to say that what changes the way we see the world, changes the world, but it is not. Where do you want me to begin? The Bible, Das Kapital? The Divine Comedy, The Satanic Verses?”

PhilosophyReadingBooksSolitudeMeta
Author:Andrew McNeillie
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“HS is supposedly a story that is also a game. In games, the characters die all the time. How many times did you let Mario fall in the pit before he saved the princess? Who weeps for these Marios. In games your characters die, but you keep trying and trying and rebooting and resetting until finally they make it. When you play a game this process is all very impersonal. Once you finally win, when all is said and done those deaths didn’t “count”, only the linear path of the final victorious version of the character is considered “real”. Mario never actually died, did he? Except the omniscient player knows better. HS seems to combine all the meaningless deaths of a trial-and-error game journey with the way death is treated dramatically in other media, where unlike our oblivious Mario, the characters are aware and afraid of the many deaths they must experience before finally winning the game.”

DeathVideo GamesMetaHomestuck
Book:Homestuck
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“And this,' Astrid says, gesturing at a wiry gentleman wearing eyeglasses and a houndstooth suit in need of pressing, standing a little distance away from the rest of the group, looking slightly uncomfortable, 'is Dexter Palmer, and he's a—what?' 'I,' says Dexter Palmer. 'Um.' 'He's a novelist,' Astrid brays, and Harold looks at Dexter, at his right arm rubbing his threadbare left elbow. Harold sees the oaken trunk in the corner of Dexter's filthy downtown loft with an enormous padlock on it, sees the tens of thousands of pages of handwritten manuscript that fill it. He sees the stub of the tallow candle on Dexter's rickety wooden desk, purchased for a dollar-fifty at a rummage sale. He sees the short leg of the desk propped up with a seven-hundred page study of phrenology, printed during the age of miracles. He sees Dexter's eyes going bad by candlelight, a whole diopter lost with each late night. 'Zounds, I am working on my masterpiece,' Dexter Palmer yells hoarsely, disturbing the neighbors. He slings a cup half-full of tepid chamomile tea at the wall, where it shatters. 'Dexter's writing a novel,' Astrid says brightly. After a few minutes of introductory cross-talk, the group of five splits into separate conversations: Harold talks with his sister and Charmaine, while Marlon ends up with Dexter. To Harold, Marlon looks cornered—Harold can't hear what Dexter's saying, but whatever he's talking about, he's clearly going on about it at length and in fine detail. Maybe Marlon is getting to hear all about the novel. Every once in a while Marlon will look at Harold and theatrically roll his eyes and sigh, but Dexter, who's frantically gesticulating, wrapped up in whatever he's chattering about, doesn't notice.”

WritingHumorWriterSatireDexter PalmerNovelistTongue In CheekMetaThe Dream Of Perpetual Motion
Book:The Dream of Perpetual Motion
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“Aidan and Kai were almost the same height, but frequently Kai seemed smaller, even less mature. Aidan couldn't completely explain it. Certainly, Kai had suffered far less in his life. Aidan wondered how Kai would have coped with the horrors he himself had endured, and allowed himself a cold smile at the thought of the bookish Kai chained in a screwship's dark hold, squirming in his own shit.”

SlaveryHistorical FictionAlternate HistoryMetaAlternate Universe
Book:Lion's Blood
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“I confini tra materiale e immateriale sono un retaggio del XX secolo. La realtà, ormai, è mista. Perché la gente paga migliaia se non milioni di euro per comprare un jpg di una scimmietta? Perché la distinzione tra reale e irreale è un consenso comune. Ricordi quel quadro di Magritte? Questa non è una pipa. Puoi provare il contrario? No! E da prima di Aristotele che ci facciamo domande su cosa sia la realtà. Io sono un costruttivista in questo senso. La realtà è un costrutto sociale, non è oggettiva. E se socialmente raggiungiamo il consenso che il Pikachu che vedo dentro Pokémon GO è reale, allora lo è.”

BlockchainCryptoNftCryptocurrencyMetaversoMetaverseEthereumMetaOpenseaVirtualreality
Author:Simone Puorto
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“Nel travel, perlopiù il metaverso è strumentale e non autoreferenziale, come nel gaming. È solo uno strumento. Non prenoto su Booking ma prenoto su Decentraland. Che differenza fa? Comunque in hotel devo andarci. Cambia solo il mezzo. È come dire che da quando siamo passati da prenotare dal telefono alla email abbiamo dematerializzato il travel. È puro nonsense.”

BlockchainCryptoNftCryptocurrencyMetaversoMetaverseEthereumMetaOpenseaVirtualreality
Author:Simone Puorto
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“La nozione centrale di "viaggio" potrebbe trasformarsi in modi che possiamo solo intravedere oggi. Pensa a come è cambiata negli anni la connotazione della parola “amico”. Fino al 2004, un amico era una persona fisica con cui uscivi nella vita reale. Dopo Facebook, il termine è diventato anche sinonimo di “connessione virtuale”, qualcuno con cui potresti non aver mai scambiato una singola parola. Quindi chissà cosa significherà viaggiare tra 10-15 anni. Possiamo solo speculare, ma, almeno in teoria, le applicazioni del metaverso sono illimitate: vuoi visitare Atlantide, l’Antica Roma o Marte? Puoi viaggiare nel tempo e nello spazio e sperimentare qualcosa che non esiste nel mondo fisico. Il travel ha un impatto catastrofico sull'ambiente. Il nostro settore, se continua così, farà alzare la temperatura di un grado e mezzo nel giro di 25 anni. Non lo dico io, ma i dati. Solo le emissioni di carbonio causate del volo civile sono cresciute del 75% dagli anni '90. Trovare alternative praticabili a un settore talmente dannoso per l'ambiente come il nostro non è solo auspicabile. È, a questo punto, obbligatorio.”

BlockchainCryptoNftCryptocurrencyMetaversoMetaverseEthereumMetaOpenseaVirtualreality
Author:Simone Puorto
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“That is no doubt how the story ought to end, with the seals and the stars, explanation, resignation, reconciliation, everything picked up into some radiant bland ambiguous higher significance, in calm of mind, all passion spent. However life, unlike art, has an irritating way of bumping and limping on, undoing conversions, casting doubt on solutions, and generally illustrating the impossibility of living happily or virtuously ever after; so I thought I might continue the tale a little longer in the form once again of a diary, though I suppose that, if this is a book, it will have to end, arbitrarily enough no doubt, in quite a short while.”

LifeArtIris MurdochEndingThe Sea The SeaMetaPostscript
Book:The Sea, The Sea
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“Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be 'true in a way'. I trust this passing reflection will not lead anyone to doubt the truth of any part of this story! When I come to describe my life with Clement Makin credulity will be strained but will I hope not fail!”

WritingTruthIris MurdochReadersThe Sea The SeaMetaUnreliable Narrator
Book:The Sea, The Sea
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“Of course we live in dreams and by dreams, and even in a disciplined spiritual life, in some ways especially there, it is hard to distinguish dream from reality. In ordinary human affairs humble common sense comes to one's aid. For most people common sense is moral sense. But you seem to have deliberately excluded this modest source of light. Ask yourself, what really happened between whom all those years ago? You've made it into a story, and stories are false.”

RealityDreamsMemoryStoryIris MurdochThe PastThe Sea The SeaMeta
Book:The Sea, The Sea
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“La humanidad ha pensando muy pocas veces en el bienestar colectivo, tanto durante los últimos siglos como en la actualidad. Entre los malos hábitos en que incurrimos, optamos repetidamente por los beneficios a corto plazo antes que por los beneficios a largo plazo.”

ErrorHumanosCivilizacionMetaObjetivoLargo PlazoCorto Plazo
Book:Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth
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