{"author":"Ken Liu","author_id":"Ken+Liu","total_quotes":43,"quotes":[{"text":"But being the mirrors for each other's souls has a cost: by the time they part from each other, the individuals in the mating pair have become indistinguishable. Before their merger, they each yearned for the other; as they part, they part from the self. The very quality that attracted them to each other is also, inevitably, destroyed in their union.","author":"Ken Liu","tags":["cost","merger","mirror","other","self","soul","union"],"id":9138,"author_id":"Ken+Liu"},{"text":"As the wind continued to howl and groan through her decaying body, she began to sing her story.","author":"Ken Liu","tags":["epigram-books","fiction","ken-liu","lontar","lontar-6","running-shoes","short-stories","short-story","speculative-fiction"],"id":15972,"author_id":"Ken+Liu"},{"text":"Who can say if the thoughts you have in your mind as you read these words are the same thoughts I had in my mind as I typed them? We are different, you and I, and the qualia of our consciousnesses are as divergent as two stars at the ends of the universe.And yet, whatever has been lost in translation in the long journey of my thoughts through the maze of civilization to your mind, I think you do understand me, and you think you do understand me. Our minds managed to touch, if but briefly and imperfectly.Does that thought not make the universe seem just a bit kinder, a bit brighter, a bit warmer and more human?We live for such miracles.","author":"Ken Liu","tags":["consciousness","mind","miracle","thoughts","translation","universe"],"id":22383,"author_id":"Ken+Liu"},{"text":"Mapidéré was but one man-and indeed, judging by rumors of his decrepit state near death, a weak, sickly man-but his creation, the empire, had taken on a life of its own. Killing the emperor would not have been enough. We have to kill the empire.","author":"Ken Liu","tags":["empire","revolution"],"id":52294,"author_id":"Ken+Liu"},{"text":"At this moment, in this place, the shifting action potential in my neurons cascade into certain arrangements, patterns, thoughts; they flow down my spine, branch into my arms, my fingers, until muscles twitch and thought is translated into motion; mechanical levers are pressed; electrons are rearranged; marks are made on paper.At another time, in another place, light strikes the marks, reflects into a pair of high-precision optical instruments sculpted by nature after billions of years of random mutations; upside-down images are formed against two screens made up of millions of light-sensitive cells, which translate light into electrical pulses that go up the optic nerves, cross the chiasm, down the optic tracts, and into the visual cortex, where the pulses are reassembled into letters, punctuation marks, words, sentences, vehicles, tenors, thoughts.The entire system seems fragile, preposterous, science fictional.","author":"Ken Liu","tags":["flow","fragile","neurons","patterns","science-fiction","system","thoughts","translation"],"id":73093,"author_id":"Ken+Liu"},{"text":"The evolution of technology is, like the evolution of literature, heavily path-dependent. Culture plays a far more important role in the acceptance, adoption, and spread of technology than many of us are willing to acknowledge.","author":"Ken Liu","tags":["culture","acceptance "],"id":84502,"author_id":"Ken+Liu"},{"text":"The 'silk' in silkpunk refers not to a source of power, but to an entirely different, expressive technology language.","author":"Ken Liu","tags":["power","language","different "],"id":143028,"author_id":"Ken+Liu"},{"text":"Emperor, king, general, duke,” he whispered to himself. “These are just labels. Climb up the family tree of any of them high enough and you’ll find a commoner who dared to take a chance.","author":"Ken Liu","tags":["ambition","commoners","rags-to-riches","royalty","upliftment"],"id":149100,"author_id":"Ken+Liu"},{"text":"Yet, my grandfather was not a monster. He was simply a man of ordinary moral courage whose capacity for great evil was revealed to his and my everlasting shame. Labeling someone a monster implies that he is from another world, one which has nothing to do with us. It cuts off the bonds of affection and fear, assures us of our own superiority, but there's nothing learned, nothing gained. It's simple, but it's cowardly. I know now that only by empathizing with a man like my grandfather can we understand the depth of the suffering he caused. There are no monsters. The monster is us.","author":"Ken Liu","tags":["evil","monstrosity"],"id":160756,"author_id":"Ken+Liu"},{"text":"Clearing away the superficial structure of the reigns of emperors and the dates of battles, there was the deeper rhythm of history's ebb and flow not as the deeds of great men, but as the lives lived by ordinary men and women wading through the currents of the natural world around them: its geology, its seasons, its climate and ecology, the abundance and scarcity of the raw material for life.","author":"Ken Liu","tags":["history"],"id":169098,"author_id":"Ken+Liu"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":43,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}