Carolyn Ives Gilman Quotes & Sayings

We're all inadequate," David answered. "Just think: the light from the outside world is mapped onto the retina, then further mapped onto the visual cortex, then broken apart and analyzed in other areas of the brain. At every step there's a loss of information. In the end, what we are aware of is not the outside world per se, but the image of the world projected onto our brains. Plato was anatomically right; we do see shadows on a wall. — Carolyn Ives Gilman

To die this way seems so random, so trivial. I have been robbed of meaning before being robbed of life. To die in darkness, alone -- for what purpose was I ever alive. It is as if I emerged from darkness into delusion, then sank back into darkness forever. — Carolyn Ives Gilman

Nay," he said. "Awareness is unbounded, undifferentiated, and is present in all things. It doth not distinguish between 'I' and all else, because it dwelleth in everything. Consciousness is a manifestation of awareness that is bounded and particular. It is concentrated in a single place and time, and is limited to a single point of view. Consciousness continually reacheth out toward awareness, to join it, but it cannot without giving up what it is. The grain of salt cannot experience the brine without dissolving. — Carolyn Ives Gilman

I knew I was really there, because I was the thing his arms encircled, the thing his love defined. — Carolyn Ives Gilman

What kind of word is 'methodal'?" David asked. "A buzzword," Ashok answered, this time himself. "Methodal. Sounds like a drug." "That's what buzzwords are. Tranquilizers." "Thought suppressants, you mean. — Carolyn Ives Gilman

I'm perfectly natural the way I am. Why can't you humans ever understand that I might not want to be afflicted with gender? — Carolyn Ives Gilman

Powerlessness is such a lure, such a poisonous lure. — Carolyn Ives Gilman

Sara had grown up in a Balavati family, which meant she had been taught to reject all articles of faith except disrespect for authority, the lodestone of her life. — Carolyn Ives Gilman