ANNIHILATION / AUTHORITY / ACCEPTANCE
the southern reach trilogy, jeff vandermeer
change pronouns as necessary and tweak sentences as appropriate.
I do not believe any of us could have anticipated the threat.
There’s what we’re looking for. Unless we are having a mass hallucination.
I’m excited by this discovery. Are you excited, too?
That’s how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality.
Silence creates its own violence.
Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough.
There are certain kinds of deaths that one should not be expected to re-live, connections that are so deep that when broken you feel the snap of the link inside you.
You could know the what of something forever and never discover the why.
What can you do when your five senses are not enough?
You can either waste time worrying about a death that might not come or concentrate on what’s left to you.
I had long ago stopped believing in promises. Biological imperatives, yes. Environmental factors, yes. Promises, no.
Perhaps my only real expertise, my only talent, is to endure beyond the endurable.
When you are too close to the center of a mystery there is no way to pull back and see the shape of it entire.
I hate words like ‘love’.
I still remember a gentler world.
So long as you don’t tell people you don’t know something, they’ll probably think you know it.
We all just want to be people, and none of us know what that really means.
What’s your passion? Do even you know?
At the time, I was seeking oblivion, and I sought in those blank, anonymous faces, even the most painfully familiar, a kind of benign escape. A death that would not mean being dead.
Do you prefer to be ignorant or unsafe?
The trees are not trees the birds are not birds, and I am not me but just something that has been walking for a very long time…
This part I will do alone, leaving you behind. Don’t follow.
It’s superstition - but it might be true.
Honesty is often just another way to be cruel.
I don’t cultivate friends; I just inherit them from other people.
I’m not the answer to all your problems.
My room is a mess and I lie sometimes and I’m not always nice to people but that’s the idea.
Has there always been someone like me to bury the bodies, to have regrets, to carry on after everyone else was dead?
Some things came to you late, but late was better than never.
I really wanted to lose myself.
What’s wrong with asking questions?
People my entire life have told me I am too much in control, but that has never been the case. I have never truly been in control, have never wanted control.
You guard the light. And light sees everything.
Don’t let them ask questions. You’re already giving them the answers, even if they don’t know it.
The world we are a part of now is difficult to accept, unimaginably difficult. I don’t know if I accept everything even now.
Sometimes you need to know when to go on to the next thing–for the sake of other people.
You have to trust I know where I’m going. I always know where I’m going.
You never seem to see yourself clearly, do you?
I don’t care for your belief system.
You’re on your own, like you’ve always been on your own.
You have to keep going forward, until you can’t go forward anymore.
