Xkcd Quotes

Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they are doing. Do things without always knowing how they'll turn out. You're curious and smart and bored, and all you see is the choice between working hard and slacking off. There are so many adventures that you miss because you're waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go.

Sometimes I mistake this for a universe that cares.

Whatever happened to our dreams? The infinite possibilities each day holds should stagger the mind. The sheer number of experiences I could have is uncountable, breathtaking, and I'm sitting here refreshing my inbox. We live trapped in loops, reliving a few days over and over, and we envision only a handful of paths laid out ahead of us. We see the same things each day, we respond the same way, we think the same thoughts, each day a slight variation on the last, every moment smoothly following the gentle curves of societal norms. We act like if we just get through today, tomorrow our dreams will come back to us. And no, I don't have all the answers. I don't know how to jolt myself into seeing what each moment could become. But I do know one thing: the solution doesn't involve watering down my every little idea and creative impulse for the sake of someday easing my fit into a mold. It doesn't involve tempering my life to better fit someone's expectations. It doesn't involve constantly holding back for fear of shaking things up. This is very important, so I want to say it as clearly as I can: FUCK. THAT. SHIT.

I have never seen a work of fiction so perfectly capture the out-of-nowhere shock of discovering that you've just bricked something important because you didn't pay enough attention to a loose wire.

I would say time is definitely one of my top three favorite dimensions.

No avian society ever develops space travel because it's impossible to focus on calculus when you could be outside flying.

Because we're grown-ups now, and its our turn to decide what that means.

Oooh, look at me, I looked up a quote!

You don’t become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process. Randall Munroe, creator of the Web comic xkcd, in his comic Marie Curie ~ ~

If you were to read for 16 hours a day at 300 words per minute, you could keep up with a world containing an average population of 100,000 living Harper Lees or 400 living Isaac Asimovs.

Jakob sends Rakel a text message that contains a link to the xkcd webcomic. The cartoon, titled “Angular Momentum,” shows a girl spinning around and around next to a bed on which her boyfriend is sitting and watching her in amazement. “What are you doing?” his speech bubble says. “Spinning counterclockwise. Each turn robs the planet of angular momentum, slowing its spin the tiniest bit, lengthening the night, pushing back the dawn, giving me a little more time here, with you,” answers the spinning girl. Rakel is amused and sends Jakob a response: “Right now I’m spinning the other way, clockwise with the earth’s rotation. All in the hope of making our planet turn the tiniest bit faster, so that time will pass more quickly and it won’t be so long until I see you again.” “Cunning—you can spin both ways” is his answer.

The infinite possibilities each day holds should stagger the mind. The sheer number of experiences I could have is uncountable, breathtaking, and I'm sitting here refreshing my inbox. We live trapped in loops, reliving a few days over and over, and we envision only a handful of paths laid out before us. We see the same things every day, we respond the same way, we think the same thoughts, each day a slight variation on the last, every moment smoothly following the gentle curves of societal norms. We act like if we just get through today, tomorrow our dreams will come back to us. And no, I don't have all the answers. I don't know how to jolt myself into seeing what each moment could become. But I do know one thing: the solution doesn't involve watering down my every little idea and creative impulse for the sake of some day easing my fit into a mold. It doesn't involve tempering my life to better fit someone's expectations. It doesn't involve constantly holding back for fear of shaking things up. his is very important, so I want to say it as clearly as I can: FUCK. THAT. SHIT.

This book is a collection of answers to hypothetical questions. These questions were submitted to me through my website, where—in addition to serving as a sort of Dear Abby for mad scientists—I draw xkcd, a stick-figure webcomic. I didn’t start out making comics. I went to school for physics, and after graduating, I worked on robotics at NASA. I eventually left NASA to draw comics full-time, but my interest in science and math didn’t fade. Eventually, it found a new outlet: answering the Internet’s weird—and sometimes worrying—questions.

This entire thing is the quote, not just the part in quote marks." [Quote marks, brackets, and editor's note are all in the original. --Ed.]

This quote was taken out of context.