How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
My dad is a physicist. He works with people who deal in all kinds of weird cosmic s***. String theory. Parallel universes. The viability of time travel. It's not going to build you a better toaster, but it is trippy stuff that makes you spend all day trying to figure it out. (4.43)
It's like trying to do math to prove God exists. Oh wait, can they do that?
Quote #2
Last night, I was so bored I actually watched a public television special about some scientists building their own big bang machine—some kind of super-duper, atom-smasher, supercollider thingy they want to use to discover strings and super-strings and parallel worlds our brains aren't wired to see yet; worlds that could be as small as a snow globe or as big as the Milky Way. Eleven dimensions. That what they say there might be. (10.1)
We're willing to place some bets that this TV special heavily influenced the basis of Cameron's delusional quest. Doesn't this big bang machine sound an awful lot like the Infinity Collider he goes into that was built by Drs. O, T, A and M?
Quote #3
"I will find it. Time, death—these are only illusions. Our atoms, the architecture of the soul, live on. I'm sure of it. […] Somewhere in those eleven dimensions we cannot yet see, like the answers to the greatest questions of all – why are we here? Where do we come from? Where do we go next? Is there a God, and if so, is He unconcerned or just really, really, really busy?" (10.53)
Some argue that religion is something that people have created to answer otherwise unanswerable questions. Faith can provide explanations for the things that remain mysterious to us, the most agonizing question being about whether or not there is an afterlife, and if so, what it's like. In Going Bovine, Bray finds a way to contemplate these questions using an amalgamation of religious beliefs and new wave quantum physics. Instead of using science against religion, she kind of melds it. Cool trick.
Quote #4
"That's cause nobody knows not'ing about how it all works out or why. Why God takes the good or the young or why we suffer. I don't know why he took my little girl with the cancer when she was only five." She takes a deep breath, like the pain is still fresh. "I don't know and I guess I never will." (13.104)
Glory adheres to the "God is all-powerful, has a plan, and is sometimes really mean" school of thought. Although this doesn't give Cam any comfort when he's clearly seeking some, it definitely gives him something to think about.
Quote #5
I want to scream, If God can see my hurt then why the hell doesn't he take it away? If God really exists, why would he allow all the terrible, unfair things to happen? I mean, what kind of sadistic creep is he? (13.120)
Cameron was raised in a non-specified Christian faith, and Christians believe that humans were created in God's image. So since Cam's pretty not into what's happening to him, why the heck has God done it to him? Perhaps it's Cam's dissatisfaction with faith-based answers that leads his mind to turn to physics-related theories.
Quote #6
"Dr. X is a brilliant scientist. Like beyond genius. Branes, parallel worlds, time travel, wormholes, superstring theory, M-theory, Y-theory, Double-Z-theory, the Theory of Everything Plus A Little Bit More. This guy was at the forefront of it all."
Just trying to follow her is making my head hurt. "My dad says that stuff isn't real science, that it can't be proven."
Her left eyebrow shoots up. "Hmmmm. Anyway…" (15.43-45)
Did you know some of these are real studies? Like, branes isn't a typo, it's a theory that discusses dimensions and planes of existence.
Quote #7
"I still don't understand how it is that you can't find this guy. You're an angel. Aren't you? Don't you have any angel superpowers—appearing to shepherds in fields where they lay, blowing trumpets? Laser eyes? At the very least, you should have some kind of angel GPS for locating missing people." (15.70)
You can tell Cam probably went to Sunday School, or at least sang some Christmas carols around the house, but he's also clearly not all that religious. If he were maybe he'd have made his guardian angel more powerful—you know, since Dulcie's ultimately his creation.
Quote #8
Maybe there's a heaven, like they say, a place where everything we've ever done is noted and recorded, weighed on the big karma scales. Maybe not. Maybe this whole thing is just a giant experiment run by aliens who find our human hijinks amusing. Or maybe we're an abandoned project started by a deity who checked out a long time ago, but we're still hardwired to believe, to try to make meaning out of the seemingly random. Maybe we're all part of the same unconscious stew, dreaming the same dreams, hoping the same hopes, needing the same connection, trying to find it, missing, trying again- each of us playing our parts in the others' plot-lines, just one big ball of human yarn tangled up together. Maybe this is it. Or maybe there's something to what Junior said about those black holes singing. That B-flat? Maybe that's the last sound we make when we join the universe, something to say, I was here. One last "Whoo-hoo!" before we're pulled into the vast, dark unknown and shot out into some other galaxy, some other world, where we have the chance to do it differently. I don't know. It's something to think about, though. (46.41)
Compare the mood of this quote to earlier in the story when Cam sarcastically lists the major world religion's views on the afterlife. Doesn't he sound much more comfortable with the fact that he doesn't have any answers here, and even with the idea that no one does?
Quote #9
We've left the moment. It's gone. We're somewhere else now, and that's okay. We've still got that other moment with us somewhere, deep in our memory, seeping into our DNA. And when our cells get scattered, whenever that happens, this moment will still exist in them. Those cells might be the building block of something new. A planet or star or a sunflower, a baby. Maybe even a cockroach. Who knows? Whatever it is, it'll be a part of us, this thing right here and now, and we'll be a part of it. (46.51)
Here's another example of how Bray uses both religion (the Buddhist belief of reincarnation) and science to explain something metaphysical. It just works somehow, doesn't it?