Human beings set out to encounter other worlds, other civilizations, without having fully gotten to know their own hidden recesses, their blind alley… - Stanisław Lem

How many extraordinary phenomena like this, so foreign to human comprehension, might lie concealed in space? Do we need to travel everywhere bringing destructive power on our ships, so as to smash anything that runs counter to our understanding?

In the past an artist produced things that were necessary socially; they were instruments, albeit of a special kind, that helped the dead reach eternity, spells to be cast, prayers to be liturgically fleshed. . . . The aesthetic component of those instruments enhanced their function but was never central, never an independent, nonutilitarian thing.

We’re not searching for anything except people. We don’t need other worlds. We need mirrors.