The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

The fact that we can never have complete, perfect knowledge does not absolve us of the moral duty to judge and to take a stand against evil.

Time’s arrow is the loss of fidelity in compression. A sketch, not a photograph. A memory is a re-creation, precious because it is both more and less than the original.

Memories of our courtship have grown hazy with time and are now coated with the smooth, golden glow of sentiment—but they are all that I have left. If ever I am allowed to run my machine again, I would like to go back to those times.

“We have children because we can’t remember our own first taste of ambrosia.”

He looked old—a quality that children are among the last to notice about their parents—and

“The fading sunlight holds infinite beauty Though it is so close to the day’s end.”

It means that sometimes you can’t become friends until you’ve fought each other.”

It’s one of the central paradoxes of archaeology that in order to excavate a site so as to study it, we must consume it and destroy it in that process.

Contempt felt good, like wine.