Greg Egan quotes

Greg Egan is an Australian scientist and acclaimed science fiction writer, known for his works exploring advanced mathematics, physics, and consciousness. His novels and short stories often push the boundaries of scientific imagination. He is celebrated for blending cutting-edge scientific concepts with engaging storytelling. Here are 36 of his quotes:

Nobody wants to spend eternity alone.

Greg Egan

Everyone here would die for the sake of truth. Everyone here lies constantly for the tiniest chance of personal gain. This is what it means to be a scientist.

Greg Egan

If we spend all our time gazing at the wonders ahead without remembering where we're standing right now, we're going to trip and fall flat on our face, over and over agaain.

Greg Egan

The Universe may be stranger than we can imagine, but it's going to have a tough time outdoing Egan.

Greg Egan

Widespread caffeine use explains a lot about the twentieth century.

Greg Egan

No one grows up. That's one of the sickest lies they ever tell you. People change. People compromise. People get stranded in situations they don't want to be in... and they make the best of it. But don't try to tell me it's some kind of... glorious preordained ascent into emotional maturity. It's not.

Greg Egan

Screw every known human culture.

Greg Egan

On his eighteenth day in the tiger cage, Robert Stoney began to lose hope of emerging unscathed.

Greg Egan

Mathematics catalogues everything that is not self-contradictory; within that vast inventory, physics is an island of structures rich enough to contain their own beholders.

Greg Egan

How does it feel to be seven thousand years old?" "That depends." "On what?" "On how I want to feel.

Greg Egan

Being rewarded for anything other than the quality of their work is the fastest way to screw-up a writer-and it isn't only new ones who suffer from that.

Greg Egan

"Yes, I'm complacent now, with my well enough paid job, with a wife I can almost talk to, with a three-year-old son all dark eyes and tousled hair and endearing clumsiness. We go driving on Sunday afternoons, through suburbs just like our own, past houses just like our own, an endlessly recurring, mesmerising daydream under the flawless blue sky. And I whistle an old song of yours, even if I never dare let the words past my lips:There's nothing wrong with The Family That a flame-thrower can't fix And there's nothing wrong with the salt of the Earth That couldn't be cured with a well-aimed BRICK.

Greg Egan

Diaspora starts about a thousand years from now. Most of human civilisation has moved inside computers; essentially, a major branch of our descendants consists of conscious software.

Greg Egan

I think new writers everywhere need opportunities to get published.

Greg Egan

[T]hat most beings would prefer to continue to exist once they exist is not in itself a good reason for bringing them into existence, it's merely a good argument against murder.

Greg Egan

Gambling is a kind of tax: a tax on stupidity. A tax on greed. Some money changes hands at random, but the net cash flow always goes one way - to the Government, to the casino operators, to the bookies, to the crime syndicates. If you ever do win, you won't have won against them. They'll still be getting their share. You'll have won against all the penniless losers, that's all.

Greg Egan

The swell was gently lifting and lowering the boat. My breathing grew slower, falling into step with the creaking of the hull, until I could no longer tell the difference between the faint rhythmic motion of the cabin and the sensation of filling and emptying my lungs. It was like floating in darkness: every inhalation buoyed me up, slightly; every exhalation made me sink back down again.

Greg Egan

There are moments when my mind misses a beat. I find myself, in mid-step or mid-breath, feeling as if delivered abruptly into my body after a long absence (spent where, I could not say), or a long, dreamless sleep. I lose not my memory, merely my thread. My attention has inexplicably wandered, but a little calm introspection restores my context and brings me peace. Almost peace.

Greg Egan

There are times when it's worth putting aside the endless myopic navel-gazing that occupies so much literature, in order to look out at the universe itself and value it for what it is.

Greg Egan

The truth is whatever you can get away with." "No, that's journalism. The truth is whatever you can't escape.

Greg Egan

A story in Asimov's is read by hundreds of thousands of people.

Greg Egan

I hadn't given much thought to the prospect of a Hugo nomination at the time it happened, but obviously once you're nominated, winning one seems a bit less far-fetched than before.

Greg Egan