▤ in progress | ✩ finished

• packing for mars, mary roach ✩
  • "you are unpredictable. you are inconstant. you take weeks to fix."
  • " . . . i began to rage inwardly and the very traits. . . which in the beginning had struck me as admirable, ultimately seemed to me detestable. the time came when i could no longer bear the sight of this man who was unfailingly kind to me. the calm which i had once admired i now called laziness, the philosophic imperturbability became in my eyes insensitiveness. the meticulous organization of his existence was maniacal old-manliness. i could have murdered him."
  • " the moment when 'one has nothing left to reveal to the other, when even his unformed thoughts can be anticipated, his pet ideas become a meaningless drool, and the way he blows out a pressure lamp or drops his boots on the floor or eats his food becomes a rasping annoyance. ' "
  • the break-away effect: a feeling that isn't one of panic, but of euphoria. "i feel like i have broken the bonds from the terrestrial sphere."
  • gravity maps of earth were once top-secret cold war possessions.
  • landing vertigo / Earth sickness
  • " the act of vomiting is an orchestral event of the gut, complex and seamlessly coordinated: 'there is a forced inspiration, the diaphragm descends, the abdominal muscles contract, the duodenum contracts, the cardia and oesophagus relaxes, the glottis closes, the larynx is drawn forward, the soft palate rises, and the mouth opens.' "
    • the "emetic brain" or "vomiting center".
  • " because human beings have this amazing tool called intuition, where they've built up this catalogue of experiences and they can draw on it instantaneously— "

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• neuromancer, william gibson ▤
  • " ... one of those strange instants of silence descended, as though a hundred unrelated conversations had simultaneously arrived at the same pause."
  • " ... all his bitterness suddenly rising in him like bile... "
  • " he'd watched her personality fragment, calving like an iceberg, splinters drifting away, and finally he'd seen the raw need, the hungry armature of addiction. "
  • " 'no,' zone said at last, his smooth forehead creased to indicate the effort it cost him to recall so much pointless detail. "
  • " when the fear came, it was like some half-forgotten friend. not the cold, rapid mechanism of the dex-paranoia, but simple animal fear. he'd lived for so long on a constant edge of anxiety that he'd almost forgotten what real fear was. "