Standback

“That contraption -- listen, Brother, they claim it thinks. I didn't believe it at first. Thought, implying rational principle, implying soul. Can the principle of a 'thinking machine' -- man-made -- be a rational soul? Bah! It seemed a thoroughly pagan notion at first. But do you know what?"

"Father?"

"Nothing could be that perverse without premeditation! It must think! It knows good and evil, I tell you, and it chose the latter.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“I don’t have any control over what memories I get, when I get them. Except every single one of them is something I would have rather forgotten.
-- "Erase, Erase, Erase”
― Elizabeth Bear

“It is done, then," Okaios said. "I supposed this was better than the alternative."

The sadness in his voice reminded Mera of an owner who has lost his prize pet. "No," she said. "A better alternative would have been no one dying."

"Then how would they learn?" Okaios asked.”
― Cadwell Turnbull, The Lesson

“The art of fiction, like the art of stage magicians, is one of directing the audience's attention to what you want them to see.”
― Nancy Kress, Beginnings, Middles & Ends