I have come to kill you."The death's heads shrugged. "You have come to try.

The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the passing of humankind from center stage, but that it contradicts our most deeply held notions of being.

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.

In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds.

Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.

Intelligence is the handmaiden of flexibility and change.

How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?

The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors.

But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.

We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light.

I never guessed I could cry so hard my face hurt.

Your own guilt is your own fault.

They said a lot of things to each other that night, but nothing that involved words.

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

It's probably hard to feel any sort of Romantic spiritual connection to nature when you have to make your living from it.

The government transfers income and wealth according to the rules of politics, which make politicians the primary beneficiaries of the system, and the poor and needy the primary victims.

Fish are not the best authority on water.

Chris Christie has officially endorsed Mitt Romney for president. Christie said President Obama is 'shrinking the American pie.' And believe me, if there's one thing Christie hates, it's a small pie.

Why are we inspired by another person's courage? Maybe because it gives us the sweet and genuine surprise of discovering some trace, at least, of the same courage in ourselves.

When I am so intensely involved with writing my books I don't like to reread them.

With us, when you speak of ‘the river,’ though there be many, you mean always the same one, the great river, the shifting, unappeasable god of the country, feared and loved the Mississippi.