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Ted Chiang Quotes

Ted Chiang is an American science fiction writer. His Chinese name is Chiang Feng-nan . His work has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and four Locus awards. His short story, "Story of Your Life", was the basis of the film Arrival . Wikipedia  

✵ 1967
Ted Chiang photo

Works

Stories of Your Life and Others
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
Ted Chiang: 11 quotes2 likes

Famous Ted Chiang Quotes

“Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.”

Ted Chiang The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

Source: The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

“Just as seeing Heaven's light gave him an awareness of God's presence in all things in the mortal plane, so it has made him aware of God's absence in all things in Hell.”

Ted Chiang book Stories of Your Life and Others

Hell Is the Absence of God; first appeared in Starlight 3, 2001.
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)

“save our emotional responses for real life.”

Ted Chiang

Arrival

“Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know.”

Ted Chiang

“Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.”

Ted Chiang The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

Source: The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

“"Forgive and forget" goes the expression, and for our idealized magnanimous selves, that was all you needed. But for our actual selves the relationship between those two actions wasn’t so straightforward. In most cases we had to forget a little bit before we could forgive; when we no longer experienced the pain as fresh, the insult was easier to forgive, which in turn made it less memorable, and so on.”

Ted Chiang

"The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_of_fact_the_truth_of_feeling_by_ted_chiang, Subterranean Press Magazine, Fall 2013

Ted Chiang Quotes

“What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future. […] Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it.”

Ted Chiang book Stories of Your Life and Others

Story of Your Life; first appeared in Starlight 2, 1998.
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)

“Centuries of their labor would not reveal to them any more of Creation than they already knew. Yet through their endeavor, men would glimpse the unimaginable artistry of Yahweh's work, in seeing how ingeniously the world had been constructed. By this construction, Yahweh's work was indicated, and Yahweh's work was concealed.”

Ted Chiang book Stories of Your Life and Others

Tower of Babylon; first appeared in Omni, 1990.
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)

“Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.”

Ted Chiang

Exhalation; first appeared in Eclipse 2, 2008.
Others

“God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion.”

Ted Chiang book Stories of Your Life and Others

Hell Is the Absence of God; first appeared in Starlight 3, 2001.
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)

“The universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological.”

Ted Chiang book Stories of Your Life and Others

Story of Your Life; first appeared in Starlight 2, 1998.
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)

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