Quotes from Jeff Vandermeer

Progress':a word to choke on, a word to discard and then pick up again, hurl it in the oven like coal, watch it spurl out its own name in black smoke from the chimney of the hunting lodge. I embrace it, and I repeat it, and yet I know no word I or any other human could use will ever be the right word.

The time for expeditions was over.

El pájaro fantasma acababa de hallar a su espectro, en una pila inexplicable de espectros varios

Were companies units or loose, ever-shifting alliances of individuals? Still didn't know.

If he stared long enough into the comforting oblivion of that microcosm, it washed away everything else, even the shadow of his reflection.

The hegemony of what was real had been altered, or broken, forever.

Am I a person in my right mind?" "I don't know what you mean," I said, my standard ploy when I wanted time to think. With my right mind. "If there's a right mind, then there's a wrong mind." "I suppose so. Yes." "How do you get a wrong mind? Is it borned into you?

To let an impulse become a compulsion, especially if he thought he was contributing to a cause greater than himself

I thought it was a person,' she said, ignoring my question. 'I thought it was a person. I thought it was.

Apparently we'd been richer than we thought, to suffer such continual diminishment and still be alive.

Our minds were down below, being feasted on by the bears.

by the time this hold, the doubling and mirroring, has waned as most reigns of terror do, the signs of his hand, his will, will have irrevocably fallen across so many places.

All the wonderful things in the world. All the ways life was better even if the world wasn't. 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.

he wanted to be rid of his itching brain, his ignited skin, the flesh beneath, to in some way become so ethereal and unbound to the earth that he could unsee, disavow, disavow.

I am convinced now that I and the rest of the expedition were given access to these records for the simple reason that, for certain kinds of classified information, it did not matter what we knew or didn't know. There was only one logical conclusion: Experience told our superiors that few if any of us would be coming back.

what a bloody silly way to die…

Maybe all of this was prevarication and excuses and not an afterword at all.

You may be an unintentional avatar, but you are an avatar nonetheless.

People thought lights deterred criminals, but unless someone was watching, lights only made it easier to navigate unfamiliar terrain.

Chapter Thirteen GARBAGE IN THE CAUSE OF LIBERTY (HOLD THE GOAT)

Qué es un mapa sino una forma de destacar ciertas cosas y disimular otras?

This last argument overcame my remorse. It was all I needed, for man is a coward intent on finding an excuse for his cowardice

the Séance & Science Brigade

When Dradin stopped running he found himself on the fringe of the religious quarter, next to an emaciated macadamia salesman who cracked jokes like nuts.