About Ken Liu
Ken Liu (born 1976) is an American author of science-fiction and fantasy, as well as a translator, lawyer, and computer programmer.
(Boston Globe staff photo by John Tlumacki)
Liu’s short story “The Paper Menagerie” is the first work of fiction, of any length, to win the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards. In addition, his short story, “Mono no aware” won the 2013 Hugo Award.
The first novel in his The Dandelion Dynasty series, The Grace of Kings, was a 2016 Nebula Award finalist. The novel was the 2016 Locus Award Best First Novel winner.
Besides his original work, Liu’s translation of Liu Cixin‘s Chinese language novel The Three-Body Problem (the first in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy) won the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel, making it the first translated novel to have won the award. Liu also translated the third volume of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past series, Death’s End, in 2016, which was a 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novel finalist.
Ken Liu Quotes
The Paper Menagerie Quotes
It has been argued that thinking is a form of compression.
Every act of communication is a miracle of translation.
Who can say if the thoughts you have in your mind as you read these words are the same thoughts I had in my mind as I typed them? We are different, you and I, and the qualia of our consciousnesses are as divergent as two stars at the ends of the universe.
And yet, whatever has been lost in translation in the long journey of my thoughts through the maze of civilization to your mind, I think you do understand me, and you think you do understand me. Our minds managed to touch, if but briefly and imperfectly.
Does that thought not make the universe seem just a bit kinder, a bit brighter, a bit warmer and more human?
We live for such miracles.
We are defined by the places we hold in the web of others’ lives.
But I did not think of her harshly. Judging was the luxury of those who did not need to survive.
We spend our entire lives trying to tell stories about ourselves—they’re the essence of memory. It is how we make living in this unfeeling, accidental universe tolerable.
At this moment, in this place, the shifting action potential in my neurons cascade into certain arrangements, patterns, thoughts; they flow down my spine, branch into my arms, my fingers, until muscles twitch and thought is translated into motion; mechanical levers are pressed; electrons are rearranged; marks are made on paper.
At another time, in another place, light strikes the marks, reflects into a pair of high-precision optical instruments sculpted by nature after billions of years of random mutations; upside-down images are formed against two screens made up of millions of light-sensitive cells, which translate light into electrical pulses that go up the optic nerves, cross the chiasm, down the optic tracts, and into the visual cortex, where the pulses are reassembled into letters, punctuation marks, words, sentences, vehicles, tenors, thoughts.
The entire system seems fragile, preposterous, science fictional.
You know what the Chinese think is the saddest feeling in the world? It’s for a child to finally grow the desire to take care of his parents, only to realize that they were long gone.
But being the mirrors for each other’s souls has a cost: by the time they part from each other, the individuals in the mating pair have become indistinguishable. Before their merger, they each yearned for the other; as they part, they part from the self. The very quality that attracted them to each other is also, inevitably, destroyed in their union.
That feeling in your heart: it’s called mono no aware. It is a sense of the transience of all things in life. The sun, the dandelion, the cicada, the Hammer, and all of us: we are all subject to the equations of James Clerk Maxwell, and we are all ephemeral patterns destined to eventually fade, whether in a second or an eon.
Time’s arrow is the loss of fidelity in compression. A sketch, not a photograph. A memory is a re-creation, precious because it is both more and less than the original.
A memory is a re-creation, precious because it is both more and less than the original.
The Grace of Kings Quotes
“A little self-doubt is a good thing,” said Jia, “but not excessive doubt. Sometimes we live up to the stories other tell about us.”
Sometimes those who lit the spark that began a conflagration must be consumed by it lest the fire burn on indefinitely.
A lord who knows how to wield men is ten times more fearsome than one who knows only how to wield a sword.
What is fate but coincidences in retrospect?
Isn’t authority itself a form of smokecraft too? It relies on performance, stage management, and the power of suggestion.
There’s never going to be an end to suffering if ‘he deserves it’ is all the justification people need for inflicting pain.
All life is an experiment.
He was like a seed still tethered to the withered flower, just waiting for the dead air of the late summer evening to break, for the storm to begin.
There is often no line between perfection and evil.
If you insist on fighting every fight that comes your way, you’re simply letting them push you around in a different way.
“Read a lot of books and try a lot of recipes,” Jia said. “When you learn enough about the world, even a blade of grass can be a weapon.”
The Wall of Storms Quotes
Let old heroes fade into story and song; the world will be remade by new heroes.
You’re my daughter, but you do not belong to me. The only duty any child owes to her parent is to live a life that is true to her nature.
Ken Liu Books
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
The Grace of Kings
The Wall of Storms
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