I first came across Greg Bear reading his short story Petra in Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology[1]. I still have the book and just took that quote from it.
I found it mind bending when I first read it.
As a kid brought up as a Catholic I was told that the world exists because of God never stops thinking about us. Regardless of if we believe in God, God believes in us and that's the important thing.
So teenage me, obsessed with hard SciFi and Cyberpunk in particular, runs bang into Petra.
It's a story about a world where God has died. With no supreme being to hold the world in its mind the rules of reality break down.
It was such a crazy concept and it came just at the right time in my life. As an adult, I no longer believe in the supernatural but I still remember the illicit feeling of reading Petra back when I did and it definitely changed me.
RIP Greg, you were brilliant!