She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the disconnection between the physical body and the essence of the self during travel.
William Gibson's quote captures the profound experience of jet lag as not just a physical state but as a philosophical observation about the nature of the soul's journey. It suggests that while our bodies may arrive at a destination quickly, our inner selves—our 'mortal souls'—lag behind, struggling to keep pace with the rapid changes in time and space. The metaphor likens the wandering soul to lost luggage, emphasizing how our deeper identity can feel displaced and requires time to catch up with our physical presence.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the challenges of travel and how it affects our sense of self.
If you've read a lot of vintage science fiction, as I have at one time or another in my life, you can't help but realise how wrong we get it. I have gotten it wrong more times than I've gotten it right. But I knew that when I started; I knew that before I wrote a word of science fiction.
I think I'd probably tell you that it's easier to desire and pursue the attention of tens of millions of total strangers than it is to accept the love and loyalty of the people closest to us.
As a writer of fiction who deals with technology, I necessarily deal with the history of technology and the history of technologically induced social change. I roam up and down it in a kind of special way because I roam down it into history, which is invariably itself a speculative affair.
His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine glass spines.
I don't have to write about the future. For most people, the present is enough like the future to be pretty scary.
I think that technologies are morally neutral until we apply them. It's only when we use them for good or for evil that they become good or evil.
How do I create something out of nothing? And how do I create my own life? I think it is by questioning, and saying to myself that there are no absolute truths.
The body is only a garment. How many times you have changed your clothing in this life, yet because of this you would not say that you have changed. Similarly, when you give up this bodily dress at death you do not change. You are just the same, an immortal soul, a child of God.
A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.
Envy is the central fact of American life.
[...] to introduce into the philosophy of war itself a principle of moderation would be an absurdity
Rightness expresses of actions, what straightness does of lines; and there can no more be two kinds of right action than there can be two kinds of straight lines.
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