Aaron Bach

Of course, we were careful not to throw them too hard, because when two hydrogen atoms are knocked together, click! a deuterium atom might be formed, or even a helium atom, and for the purposes of the game, such atoms were out: what’s more, if one of the two belonged to your opponent, you had to give him an atom of your own to pay him back.

When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or betrayal, there may come despair. Such is the way of the mind.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask.

Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek.

Hal likes to get high in secret, but a bigger secret is that he’s as attached to the secrecy as he is to getting high.

The Trisolarans who deemed the humans bugs seemed to have forgotten one fact: The bugs have never been truly defeated.