Greg Egan Quotes

19 Sourced Quotes

You know what they say the modern version of Pascal's Wager is? Sucking up to as many Transhumanists as possible, just in case one of them turns into God.

Greg Egan
For there is a truth which cannot be bought or sold, imposed by force, resisted or escaped.

Greg Egan
The Universe may be stranger than we can imagine, but it's going to have a tough time outdoing Egan.

Greg Egan
Would I have been happier? Maybe. But then, happiness was overrated.

Greg Egan
That most beings would prefer to continue to exist once they exist is not in itself a good reason for bringing them into existence, it's merely a good argument against murder.

Greg Egan
Everyone here would die for the sake of truth. Everyone here lies constantly for the tiniest chance of personal gain. This is what it means to be a scientist.

Greg Egan
Yes, I'm complacent now, with my well enough paid job, with a wife I can almost talk to, with a three-year-old son all dark eyes and tousled hair and endearing clumsiness. We go driving on Sunday afternoons, through suburbs just like our own, past houses just like our own, an endlessly recurring, mesmerising daydream under the flawless blue sky. And I whistle an old song of yours, even if I never dare let the words past my lips: There's nothing wrong with The Family
That a flame-thrower can't fix
And there's nothing wrong with the salt of the Earth
That couldn't be cured with a well-aimed BRICK.

Greg Egan
On his eighteenth day in the tiger cage, Robert Stoney began to lose hope of emerging unscathed.

Greg Egan
Somebody out there, show your compassion, come and kill me. Cut me free and watch me slowly shrivel, or slice me up and flush me down a toilet. Any way you like, I don't mind. Come on! You do it for your youngest children, you do it for your sick old parents. Come and do it for me. I can tell you'd like it. Don't be nervous, lovers! You'll never be found out, if that's what's holding you back: I'll stay silent to the end, be it swift or slow. Come on, people! I'm totally defenceless. Hurry up! Don't be shy. You have the right. You made me, you created me, so you know you have the right.

Greg Egan
Still, for the first time in our lives, we would have been through exactly the same experience, from exactly the same point of view — even if the experience was only spending eight hours locked in separate rooms, and the point of view was that of a genderless robot with an identity crisis.

Greg Egan
There are moments when my mind misses a beat. I find myself, in mid-step or mid-breath, feeling as if delivered abruptly into my body after a long absence (spent where, I could not say), or a long, dreamless sleep. I lose not my memory, merely my thread. My attention has inexplicably wandered, but a little calm introspection restores my context and brings me peace. Almost peace.

Greg Egan
"The truth is whatever you can get away with."
"No, that's journalism. The truth is whatever you can't escape."

Greg Egan
"How does it feel to be seven thousand years old?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
"On how I want to feel."

Greg Egan
The swell was gently lifting and lowering the boat. My breathing grew slower, falling into step with the creaking of the hull, until I could no longer tell the difference between the faint rhythmic motion of the cabin and the sensation of filling and emptying my lungs. It was like floating in darkness: every inhalation buoyed me up, slightly; every exhalation made me sink back down again.

Greg Egan
There are times when it's worth putting aside the endless myopic navel-gazing that occupies so much literature, in order to look out at the universe itself and value it for what it is.

Greg Egan
I want to end my life like a human being: in Intensive Care, high on morphine, surrounded by cripplingly expensive doctors and brutal, relentless life-support machines. Then the corpse can go into orbit — preferably around the sun. I don't care how much it costs, just so long as I don't end up part of any fucking natural cycle: carbon, phosphorus, nitrogen. Gaia, I divorce thee. Go suck the nutrients out of someone else, you grasping bitch.

Greg Egan
Gambling is a kind of tax: a tax on stupidity. A tax on greed. Some money changes hands at random, but the net cash flow always goes one way - to the Government, to the casino operators, to the bookies, to the crime syndicates. If you ever do win, you won't have won against them. They'll still be getting their share. You'll have won against all the penniless losers, that's all.

Greg Egan
If we spend all our time gazing at the wonders ahead without remembering where we're standing right now, we're going to trip and fall flat on our face, over and over agaain.

Greg Egan
No one grows up. That's one of the sickest lies they ever tell you. People change. People compromise. People get stranded in situations they don't want to be in… and they make the best of it. But don't try to tell me it's some kind of… glorious preordained ascent into emotional maturity. It's not.

Greg Egan