Dr. Heywood Floyd quotes

View Quote [referring to Europa] Oh, there's something down there, all right. We all saw it; we read the data; we know it's there. But suppose, just suppose that it had something to do with the Monolith? Now, before you get that look on all of your faces, just listen to me for a minute. We've been sending probes out here since the 1970s. And so have you guys. But none of us have ever encountered even the slightest signs of chlorophyll on any of Jupiter's moons, never. And we certainly were close enough, weren't we? 9 years ago, the Monolith was detected here. Discovery was sent up and everything went wacko. You catching my drift? So here we are, 9 years later, trying to figure out what the hell happened and what the Monolith was all about. And guess what we discover along the way? The possibility of life where it had never existed before. I don't think it was electrostatic anything. I think something wants us to stay away from Europa.

View Quote Dear Caroline: I miss you terribly. The time has come to put ourselves in orbit around Io, which is where the Discovery is. And we don't have enough fuel to slow ourselves down, so we are about to use a technique called aerobraking. The theory is that we will enter the outer layer of Jupiter's atmosphere, using what is called a ballute for a shield. The atmosphere will slow us down, and Jupiter's gravity will grab hold of us and slingshot us around behind the dark side. If all goes well, we'll wind up in a gentle orbit around Io. It's dynamite on paper. Of course, the people who came up with the numbers on the paper aren't here. Since no one has ever done this before, everyone up here is as scared as I am. The difference is they're busy. I have nothing to do but wait for it to happen. And I hope this is all worth it.

View Quote Dear Caroline: The first part of this journey is coming to an end. We are about to rendezvous with the Discovery. The race will be on now. We're going to send a boarding party over to climb inside this 800-foot long shipwreck, which is floating over Io, to see if she can be rescued before her orbit gives out. There are 9 years of secrets inside, including a sleeping computer who knows the answers. My past is also inside, and I want those answers.

View Quote Floyd to Milson: My news is a little better than yours. Discovery has been partially revived. I don't know how much damage has been done, or if we'll be able to bring it back home. Most of that is up to HAL. The drive system could be operated manually, so we were able to pull Discovery away from its decaying orbit around Io. I must say, the farther away I get from Io, the happier I am. It's a violent moon, even for Jupiter. Europa, for all its cold gray, is a lot more comforting. I tell you, Victor, there's some kind of new life down there, trying to get through all that ice. We are 10,000 kilometers away from the Monolith. I can't see it, except I know it's there. I also think it knows we're here. It's time to unleash Chandra. We'll see if our computer brain surgeon and psychiatrist can put HAL back together again. To tell you the truth, I don't know if HAL is homicidal, suicidal, neurotic, psychotic, or just plain broken.

View Quote Dear Caroline: This is finally it. After 9 years and hundreds of millions of miles, we are about to come face to face with the Monolith. The last human being who did that disappeared and was never seen or heard from again. Something truly amazing is going on out here, and I really believe this black giant is controlling it all. We have so much to ask. I have a feeling that the answers are bigger than the questions.

View Quote My dear Christopher: This is the last time I'll be able to speak to you for a long while. I'm trying to put into words what has happened. Maybe that's for historians to do sometime later. They will record that the next day, the President of the United States looked out of the White House window and the Premier of the Soviet Union looked out of the Kremlin window, and saw the new distant sun in the sky. They read the message, and perhaps they learned something because they finally recalled their ships and their planes. I am going to sleep now. I will dream of you and your mother. I will sleep knowing that you are both safe, that the fear is over. We have seen the process of life take place. Maybe this is the way it happened on Earth millions of years ago. Maybe it's something completely different. I still don't know really what the Monolith is. I think it's many things. An embassy for an intelligence beyond ours. A shape of some kind for something that has no shape. Your children will be born in a world of two suns. They will never know a sky without them. You can tell them that you remember when there was a pitch black sky with no bright star, and people feared the night. You can tell them when we were alone, when we couldn't point to the light and say to ourselves, "There is life out there." Someday, the children of the new sun will meet the children of the old. I think they will be our friends. You can tell your children of the day when everyone looked up and realized that we were only tenants of this world. We have been given a new lease and a warning from the landlord.