“I wanted to kill myself. I would have done it, too, if I had owned a gun. I was considering the gruesome alternatives — pills, slitting my wrists with a razor blade, jumping off a bridge — when another student called to ask me a detailed question on relativity. There was no way, after fifteen minutes of thinking about Mr. Einstein, that suicide was still a viable option. Divorce, certainly. Celibacy, highly likely. But death was out of the question. I could never have prematurely terminated my love affair with physics.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

"Richard Wakefield" in Rama II (1989)
1980s

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Arthur C. Clarke 207

British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, u… 1917–2008

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