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“He hadn't loved me well in the end, but he'd loved me well when it mattered.”

“In a blinding flash it showed me that I, too, was a living being of flesh and blood, another animal, who had my time on earth now, but who one day would cease to be here.”

“It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.”

“Donna can’t believe that one person could own all of these clothes. My thoughts turn, as I’m sure do yours, to moth management. Sometimes people ask me what I do, and the correct answer is ‘almost nothing’, but if pressed, I might say that I’m a writer.”

“You might get an A in your maths. But life is blo­ody dif­fe­rent. You can’t expect life to be an A all the time.”

“But, just because we loved each other, doesn't mean we were meant to be together. And just because you loved one, doesn't mean you can't love another. ”

“(...) I share almost ninety-nine per cent of my genes with a chimpanzee - and our longevity is virtually the same - but I don't think you have an inkling of how much more I comprehend, and yet I know I must tear myself away from it. For example, I have a good grasp of just how infinitely great outer space is and how it's divided into galaxies and clusters of galaxies, spirals and lone stars, and that there are healthy stars and febrile red giants, white dwarfs and neutron stars, planets ans asteroids. I know everything about the sun and moon, about the evolution of life on earth, about the Pharaohs and the Chinese dynasties, the countries of the world and their peoples as presently constituted, not to mention all the studying I've done on plants and animals, canals and lakes, rivers and mountain passes. Without even a pause for thought I can tell you the names of several hundred cities, I can tell you the names of nearly all the countries in the world, and I know the approximate populations of every one. I have a knowledge of the historical background of the different cultures, their religion and mythology, and to a certain extent also the history of their languages, in particular etymological relationships, especially within the Indo-European family of languages, but I can certainly reel off a goodly number of expressions from the Semitic language too, and the same from Chinese and Japanese, not to mention all the topographical and personal names I know. In addition, I'm acquainted with several hundred individuals personally, and just from my own small country I could, at the drop of a hat, supply you with several thousand names of loving fellow countrymen whom I know something about - fairly extensive biographical knowledge in some cases. And I needn't confine myself to Norwegians, we're living more and more in a global village, and soon the village square will cover the entire galaxy. On another level, there are all the people I'm genuinely fond of, although it isn't just people one gets attached to, but places as well: just think of the all the places I know like the back of my hand, and where I can tell if someone's gone chopped down a bush or moved a stone. Then there are books, especially all those that have taught me so much about the biosphere and outer space, but also literary works, and through them all the imaginary people whose lives I've come to know and who, at times, have meant a great deal to me. And then I couldn't live without music, and I'm very eclectic, everything from folk music and Renaissance music to Schonberg and Penderecki, but I have to admit, and this has a bearing on the very perspective we're trying to gain, I have to admit to having a particular penchant for romantic music, and this, don't forget, can also be found amongst the works of Bach and Gluck, not to mention Albinoni. But romantic music has existed in every age, and even Plato warned against it because he believed that melancholy could actually weaken the state, and it's patently clear when you get to Puccini and Mahler that music has become a direct expression of what I'm trying to get you to comprehend, that life is too short and that the way human beings are fashioned means they must take leave of far too much. If you've heard Mahler's Abschied from Das Lied von the Erde you'll know what I mean. Hopefully you'll have understood that it's the farewell itself I'm referring to, the actual leave- taking, and that this takes place in the self-same organ where everything I'm saying goodbye to is stored.”

“At the subatomic level, reality is the collection of all possible quantum objects (Objects in an axiomatic sense), for example, an electron exists genuinely before measurement. Objects are devoid of experimental content, belonging to the 'hidden' (implicit) reality, about which one can only say that it exists (ontic truth – Def. 7.2.) and serves as a substrate (ex nihilo nihil fit) for S-objects (e.g., an electron after measurement), appearing as the effect of measurement performed by an observer (ontic truth). S-construct is essentially a model of S-object (e.g., characteristics of an electron after measurement), providing a more or less experimentally verified characterization of the electron as such (correspondence truth – Def. 7.2.). In the case of RAES, the electron is an abstract-essential entity that exists independently of the knowing subject and physical reality but can be reconstructed by the knowing subject (if it exists at all) in an infinite series of approximations (asymptotic truth – Def. 7.2.)”