The evolution of technology is, like the evolution of literature, heavily path-dependent. Culture plays a far more important role in the acceptance, adoption, and spread of technology than many of us are willing to acknowledge.

— Ken Liu

The fact that we can never have complete, perfect knowledge does not absolve us of the moral duty to judge and to take a stand against evil.

— Ken Liu

There are many ways to say I love you in this cold, dark, silent universe, as many as the twinkling stars.

— Ken Liu

There is far more happiness in a life that is your own than a life in which you are handed the lines to say and shown the gestures to make. Do not ever be ambitious.

— Ken Liu

There is often no line between perfection and evil.

— Ken Liu

There's this long history of colonialism and the colonial gaze when applied to matters related to China. So a lot of conceptions about China in literary representations in the West are things you can't even fight against because they've been there so long that they've become part of the Western imagination of China.

— Ken Liu

The 'silk' in silk punk refers not to a source of power, but to an entirely different, expressive technology language.

— Ken Liu

The way I look at it is this: If you try to obey the law, and the judges call you a criminal anyway, then you might as well live up to the name.

— Ken Liu

Those men and women of Hangzhou died a hundred years ago, Than Half, and nothing can be done to change that. But the past lives on in the form of memories, and those in power are always going to want to erase and silence the past, to bury the ghosts. Now that you know about the past, you're no longer an innocent bystander. If you do not act you are complicit with the Emperor and his Blood Drops in this new act of violence, this deed of erasure. Like Wang Fichu, you're now a witness. Like him, you must choose what to do. You must decide if, on the day you die, you will regret your choice.

— Ken Liu

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.

— Ken Liu