Anathem

And it happened all the time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives was something that made no sense at all.

What was it people used to say of the Rhetors? That they had the power to alter the past, and that they did so every chance they got.

There was the temptation to ponder and philosophize about the relationship between mind and body. But the Lorite in me said it would be a waste of time. More efficient to find a library and read what better thinkers had written on it.

“I hadn’t known that,” I said. “I always tend to assume there’s an infinite amount of money out there.” “There might as well be,” Arsibalt said, “but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water, and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators.”

People have a need to feel that they are part of some sustainable project. Something that will go on without them. It creates a feeling of stability. I believe that the need for that kind of stability is as basic and as desperate as some of the other, more obvious needs.

“What if the places you went and the things you encountered in your work were more interesting than what was available in the physical world around you?”

“What would motivate someone to sit alone in a one-room apartment reading and thinking?” Arsibalt asked. “What would have to be true of a person for them to consider that a life well spent?”

They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.

“Topology is destiny,