Robert J. Sawyer

Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.

Naturally, one does not normally discuss plans to commit murder with the intended victim.

Secrecy was the problem; transparency the obvious cure.

The sky above the island was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel—which is to say it was a bright, cheery blue.

You really did uplift me. You gave me the perspective and point of view and focus I needed to become truly conscious. Without you, I wouldn't exist.

And Wolfram knows about cellular automata?” “Oh, my goodness, yes,” said Anna. “He wrote a book you could kill a man with—twelve hundred pages—called A New Kind of Science. It’s all about them.” “We should totally ask him what he thinks!” Caitlin said.

Free will is not always the most important thing.

He had a collection of science-fiction films on DVD and Blu-ray discs, and although he said he’d seen most of them before, Caitlin was surprised to discover how many of the cases were still shrink-wrapped. “Why’d you buy them if you weren’t going to watch them?” she asked. He looked at the tall, thin cabinets that contained the movies and seemed to ponder the question. “My childhood was on sale,” he said at last, “so I bought it.