Quotes from Jeff Vandermeer

I had a wakefulness that I could not shake, and I was still drunk.

facility devoted to that purpose. She would have been briefed with whatever half-truths the Southern Reach's command and control deemed useful, based on criteria Control still found arcane, even murky. She would have been subjected to conditioning to make her more receptive to hypnotic suggestion. * * *

After the last swallow, the glass walls, deprived of humidity, decompose rather quickly, obliging drinkers to order another round immediately.

that what we term sanity is only a measure of success in concealing underlying madness

The world went on, even as it fell apart, changed irrevocably, became something strange and different.

Transformations were taking place here, and as much as I had felt part of a "natural" landscape on my trek to the lighthouse, I could not deny that these habitats were transitional in a deeply unnatural way. A perverse sense of relief overtook me; at least now I had proof of something strange happening, along with the brain tissue the anthropologist had taken from the skin of the Crawler.

I specialized in transitional environments, and this particular location transitioned several times, meaning that it was home to a complexity of ecosystems.

To paint that horrible scene, something terrible must have befallen the artist.

But if he was here to assess and restore, he needed a better idea of how badly it had all slipped—and as some sociopath at another station had once said, "The fish rots from the head." Fish rotted all over, cell corruption being nonhierarchical and not caste-driven, but point taken.

Everything added to her and everything taken away had led to that moment and from her perch she had radiated love for every animal she could not help, with nothing left over for any human being.

Too emotionally invested. And yet compassion is what you most distrust, what you thrust away from you, preferring to project with everyone but Grace that you're cold, distant, even harsh, so that you can be clearheaded and objective...even if acting the part has made you a little cold, distant, and harsh.

This stutter-step of disaster after natural disaster was just a blip next to LED lights, driverless cars, a possible end to poverty through gene-edited crops.

I've been trying to remember this place," she said, almost plaintively. "I love it here, but the entire time I've felt like it was the one remembering me.

So many needing so much to communicate what amounted to so little.

Maybe one day we'll all be Steampunks

There is always a charge, of one kind or another. *

May 6. No prott. But I have been having very odd thoughts.

some working explanation of the universe is necessary – however absurd – to the happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face the problems of life.

brains that self-washed, bathed in received ideologies that came down from on high, ideologies that could remain dormant or hidden for years, silent as death until they struck. Almost anything could happen now, and did.

And yet compassion is what you most distrust, what you thrust away from you, preferring to project with everyone but Grace that you're cold, distant, even harsh, so that you can be clearheaded and objective Ã¢â'¬Â¦ even if acting the part has made you a little cold, distant, and harsh.

Because our minds process information almost solely through analogy and categorization, we are often defeated when presented with something that fits no category and lies outside of the realm of our analogies.

Mr. Martell praises your qualities as a neighbor and comments not infrequently on your excellent virtue of attending strictly to your own business.

Every photograph... was a riot of luminous, out-of-focus color.

If they did, I would just have rebuilt it even better and told everyone about the grim kid who talked to frogs." I had never talked to the frogs; I despised anthropomorphizing animals.