The Dark Forest

Quotes

The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 162  | Added on Sunday, August 11, 2019, 12:54 AM

Without the fear of heights, there can be no appreciation for the beauty of high places.
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 575-79  | Added on Sunday, August 11, 2019, 03:55 AM

The assembly fell into a prolonged silence. Ahead of them stretched the leaden road of time, terminating somewhere in the mists of the future, where all they could see were flickering flames and luster of blood. The brevity of a human lifespan tormented them as never before, and their hearts soared above the vault of time to join with their descendants and plunge into blood and fire in the icy cold of space, the eventual meeting place for the souls of all soldiers.
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 1156-58  | Added on Sunday, August 11, 2019, 12:21 PM

“You’re one of the calmest people I’ve ever met.” “The calmness comes from cynicism. There’s not much in the world that can make me care.” “Whatever it is, I’ve never seen someone who could stay calm in a situation like this.
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 1198-1201  | Added on Sunday, August 11, 2019, 12:24 PM

“Two. Passive waiting: believing that the outcome of the war depends on scientists and engineers; believing that prior to breakthroughs in basic research and key technologies, the space force is just a pipe dream, and subsequent confusion about the importance of its present work; being satisfied simply with completing tasks related to establishing this military branch; lacking innovation.
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 1201-5  | Added on Sunday, August 11, 2019, 12:25 PM

“Three. Harboring unrealistic fantasies: requesting to use hibernation technology to leap four centuries into the future and take part in the Doomsday Battle directly. A number of younger comrades have already expressed this wish, and one has even submitted a formal application. On the surface, this is a positive state of mind, a desire to throw oneself onto the front lines, but it is essentially just another form of defeatism. Lacking confidence in victory and doubting the significance of our present work, a soldier’s dignity becomes the only pillar sustaining work and life.
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 1356-66  | Added on Sunday, August 11, 2019, 04:37 PM

“She’s alive, isn’t she?” He nodded and sat up. “Rong, I used to think that a character in a novel was controlled by her creator, that she would be whatever the author wanted her to be, and do whatever the author wanted her to do, like God does for us.” “Wrong!” she said, standing up and beginning to pace the room. “Now you realize you were wrong. This is the difference between an ordinary scribe and a literary writer. The highest level of literary creation is when the characters in a novel possess life in the mind of the writer. The writer is unable to control them, and might not even be able to predict the next action they will take. We can only follow them in wonder to observe and record the minute details of their lives like a voyeur. That’s how a classic is made.” “So literature, it turns out, is a perverted endeavor.” “It was like that for Shakespeare and Balzac and Tolstoy, at least. The classic images they created were born from their mental wombs. But today’s practitioners of literature have lost that creativity. Their minds give birth only to shattered fragments and freaks, whose brief lives are nothing but cryptic spasms devoid of reason. Then they sweep up these fragments into a bag they peddle under the label ‘postmodern’ or ‘deconstructionist’ or ‘symbolism’ or ‘irrational.’”
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 1386-89  | Added on Sunday, August 11, 2019, 04:40 PM

“Look, mountains.” She pointed off in the distance. “Visibility is good today. Those are the Taihang Mountains. They run parallel to this road, and then bend around to form a block in the west, where the road goes into them. I’d say that right now we’re—” “No, no. Don’t say where we are! Once we know where we are, then the world becomes as narrow as a map. When we don’t know, the world feels unlimited.”
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 1454-64  | Added on Sunday, August 11, 2019, 04:44 PM

“You may need a bit of adjustment, but it’s nothing serious,” the doctor said, after listening to his lengthy narrative. “Nothing serious?” Luo Ji opened his bloodshot eyes wide. “I’m madly in love with a fictional person from a novel of my own creation. I’ve been with her, I’ve traveled with her, and I’ve even broken up with my real-life girlfriend over her. Is that nothing serious to you?” The doctor smiled tolerantly. “Don’t you get it? I’ve given my most profound love to an illusion!” “Are you under the impression that the object of everyone else’s love actually exists?” “Is that even a question?” “Sure. For the majority of people, what they love exists only in the imagination. The object of their love is not the man or woman of reality, but what he or she is like in their imagination. The person in reality is just a template used for the creation of this dream lover. Eventually, they find out the differences between their dream lover and the template. If they can get used to those differences, then they can be together. If not, they split up. It’s as simple as that.
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 1626-29  | Added on Sunday, August 11, 2019, 06:36 PM

“These Wallfacers will be granted extensive powers that will enable them to mobilize and exploit a portion of Earth’s existing military resources. As they carry out their strategic plans, the Wallfacers need not make any explanation for their actions and commands, regardless of how incomprehensible their behavior may be. Monitoring and control of the Wallfacer activity will be undertaken by the UN Planetary Defense Council, the sole institution granted the authority to veto Wallfacer commands under the UN Wallfacer Act.
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 1633-37  | Added on Sunday, August 11, 2019, 06:36 PM

“The Wallfacers are undertaking the most difficult mission in human history. They will truly be on their own, their souls closed off to the world, to the entire universe. Their only communication partner and sole spiritual support will be themselves. Shouldering this great responsibility, they will pass through the long years alone, so let me speak for all humanity and offer them our deepest respect. “Now, on behalf of the United Nations, I will announce the final four Wallfacer candidates as chosen by the UN Planetary Defense Council.”
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 1915-19  | Added on Sunday, August 11, 2019, 06:52 PM

And once the Wallfacer mission and identity were granted, they could not be refused or abandoned. This impossibility was not due to any individual’s coercion, but because cold logic, as determined by the project’s very nature, meant that once someone became a Wallfacer, an invisible and impenetrable screen was immediately thrown up between them and ordinary people that made their every action significant. And that was what the smiles directed at Wallfacers meant: How are we supposed to know whether or not you have already started work?
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 2931-34  | Added on Sunday, August 11, 2019, 10:30 PM

“Because it’s one of the few armed forces available to humanity that uses lives as a weapon. You know, fundamental science has been frozen by the sophons, and this imposes corresponding limitations on advances in computer science and artificial intelligence. In the Doomsday Battle, space fighters will still be piloted by humans, and that requires an army who possesses that spirit. Ball lightning requires a close-range attack.”
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 2942-46  | Added on Sunday, August 11, 2019, 10:31 PM

“On the one hand, thanks to our common enemy, our hatred of the West has faded. On the other, the human race that the Trisolarans want to wipe out includes the hated West, so to us, perishing together would be a joy. So we don’t hate the Trisolarans.” The old man spread his hands. “You see, hatred is a treasure more precious than gold or diamonds, and a weapon keener than any in the world, but now it’s gone. It’s not yours to give back. So the organization, like me, does not have long to live.” Tyler remained silent. “As for Seldon, I’d say his plan is an impossible one.”
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 3562-67  | Added on Wednesday, August 14, 2019, 03:32 AM

“If you won’t think of anything else, then just imagine that Doomsday Battle four centuries from now, and the look in their eyes when they see you! What sort of a person will they see? A man who abandoned the woman he loves most, together with all of humanity? A man unwilling to save all of the world’s children? A man who wouldn’t even save his own child? Are you, as a man, capable of withstanding their gaze?” Luo Ji bent his head in silence. The sound of the nighttime rain falling on grass and lake was like myriad entreaties from another time and space.
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 3765-68  | Added on Wednesday, August 14, 2019, 12:28 PM

Only then did his mood leave the track of his thoughts, Zhang Yan’s eyes appearing before his own in the boundless blank white of the natural painting. But he was now able to keep his mood in check and continue turning himself into a thinking machine. A month went by without him knowing it, and then winter came in full force. But he still conducted his lengthy thought process outside, sharpening his mind on the cold.
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 6408-10  | Added on Friday, August 30, 2019, 10:55 PM

And at any location, so long as you had the appropriate system permissions, you could pull up a complete command console, including a captain’s interface, which effectively made the entire ship, even the passageways and bathrooms, a bridge, command module, captain’s room, and operations room!
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 7228-32  | Added on Friday, September 06, 2019, 10:52 AM

More than two centuries before, in his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke had described a black monolith left on the moon by an advanced alien civilization. Surveyors had measured its dimensions with ordinary rulers and had found a ratio of one to four to nine. When these were rechecked using the most high-precision measurement technology on Earth, the ratio remained an exact one to four to nine, with no error at all. Clarke described it as a “passive yet almost arrogant display of geometrical perfection.” Now, humanity was facing a far more arrogant display of power.
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 7792-97  | Added on Sunday, September 08, 2019, 06:16 AM

Then he began to see symptoms of psychological imbalance among officers above the rank of lieutenant colonel. Most of them started to become increasingly introverted, spending long periods alone with their thoughts and sharply reducing their social interactions. They spoke less and less at meetings, sometimes choosing to become completely silent. Lan Xi noticed that the light had disappeared from their eyes, and their expressions had turned gloomy. They couldn’t look anyone in the eye for fear that others would notice the fog in theirs. When they occasionally met someone’s gaze, they would break away immediately like they had been shocked.…
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The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past) (Cixin Liu)
- Highlight Loc. 8258-64  | Added on Sunday, September 08, 2019, 06:51 AM

Contrary to his expectations, his memories of life before becoming a Wallfacer were a blank. All that he could fish out from the sea of memory were a few fragments, and the farther back he went, the fewer there were. Had he really been to high school? Had he really attended primary school? Had he really had a first love? Some of the fragments bore clear scratches, reminding him that those things had indeed taken place. The details were vivid, but the feelings had vanished without a trace. The past was like a handful of sand you thought you were squeezing tightly, but which had already run out through the cracks between your fingers. Memory was a river that had run dry long ago, leaving only scattered gravel in a lifeless riverbed. He had lived life always looking out for the next thing, and whenever he had gained, he had also lost, leaving him with little in the end.