David Zindell
American science fiction and fantasy author with a degree in mathematics.
To be what you want to be: isn't this the essence of being human?
The memory of all things is in all things, Danlo remembered. Nothing is ever truly lost.
"The true Elder Eddas," he said "are universal memories. The One memory is just the memory of the universe itself. The way the universe evolves in conscioiusness of itself and causes itself to be. We are just this blessed consciousness, nothing more, nothing less. We are the light inside light that fuses into the atoms of our bodies; we are the fire that whirls across the stellar deeps and dances all things into being."
"Now you are speaking mystically again, Little Fellow."
"About some things there is no other way to speak."
This was the true nature of consciousness and the meaning of matter, that ultimately both were one substance without cause or control outside itself.
"What is a human being, then?" ...
"A seed."
"A … seed?"
"An acorn that is unafraid to destroy itself in growing into a tree."
Eternity and pain, pain and eternity — they are the only two things of which the universe is made.
For it is only in accepting death that one can truly live, and for the human animal, death has always been the great black beast from the abyss to be dreaded or defeated or avoided or hated - but never looked upon clearly face to face.
The true human being ... is the meaning of the universe. He is a dancing star. He is the exploding singularity pregnant with infinite possibilities.
Life moved ever outward into infinite possibilities and yet all things were perfect and finished in every single moment, their end attained.
The belly is the reason that man does not easily mistake himself for a god.
"All living things are afraid to die."
"No, you're exactly wrong, the only truly alive beings are those unafraid to die."
Truth, like a woman, must be wooed and won - and this only through the purity of mind and the heart’s deep love.
For us humanity was a distant goal toward which all men were moving, whose image no one knew, whose laws were nowhere written down.