Liu Cixin

The universe is a forest, patrolled by numberless and nameless predators. In this forest, others are hell, a dire existential threat. Stealth is survival. Any civilisation that reveals its location is prey. Earth has. And the others are on the way.

The Dark Forest

Laura Dobie

Naomi J.

Don't say where we are! Once we know where we are, then the world becomes as narrow as a map. When we don't know, the world feels unlimited.

Jasper

'Keiko, come with me to the end of days,' Hines murmured.

The insects in the grove seemed to have grown accustomed to their presence and resumed their musical chirping. When a soft wind blew through the bamboo and the stars in the night sky flashed through the gaps between the leaves, it was as if the insect chorus were issuing from those stars.

You're like the blank space in a traditional painting: pure but, to a mature appreciation, infinitely appealing, he thought as he looked at her.

'Yan Yan, she's not as beautiful as you. That's the truth.' He also wanted to say, One might be able to find her beauty among these works of art, but yours eclipses them, but he didn't want to come off as sarcastic 

As the elderly passed away, the departed Golden Shore vanished into the smoke of history. The ship of human civilization floated alone in the vast ocean, surrounded on all sides by endless, sinister waves, and no one knew if there even was an opposite shore.

"If I destroy you, what business is it of yours?"

I only wish to discuss with you one possibility: Perhaps seeds of love are present in other places in the universe. We ought to encourage them to sprout and grow.

The Dark Forest quotes

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