# Stories of Your Life and Others  ## Metadata - Author: [[Ted Chiang]] - Full Title: Stories of Your Life and Others - Category: #books ## Highlights - What she did pay attention to was that same sense of rightness, possessed by every theorem she learned, as insistent as the tiles’ physicality, and as exact as their fit. ([Location 1256](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0048EKOP0&location=1256)) - He was curious as to how her face had developed such a close familiarity with so many expressions, and yet normally revealed nothing. ([Location 1292](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0048EKOP0&location=1292)) ## New highlights added December 16, 2023 at 8:43 AM - instead, I saw semagrams with my mind’s eye, sprouting like frost on a windowpane. As I grew more fluent, semagraphic designs would appear fully formed, articulating even complex ideas all at once. My thought processes weren’t moving any faster as a result, though. Instead of racing forward, my mind hung balanced on the symmetry underlying the semagrams. The semagrams seemed to be something more than language; they were almost like mandalas. I found myself in a meditative state, contemplating the way in which premises and conclusions were interchangeable. There was no direction inherent in the way propositions were connected, no “train of thought” moving along a particular route; all the components in an act of reasoning were equally powerful, all having identical precedence. ([Location 2109](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0048EKOP0&location=2109)) - Humans had developed a sequential mode of awareness, while heptapods had developed a simultaneous mode of awareness. We experienced events in an order, and perceived their relationship as cause and effect. They experienced all events at once, and perceived a purpose underlying them all. A minimizing, maximizing purpose. ([Location 2223](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0048EKOP0&location=2223))