Quotes from Jeff Vandermeer

Nor could I stop thinking of the perfect little biotech slaves that had paraded themselves around my special cake in the fancy restaurant. In my mind, they kept spiraling that cake for years, as it decayed into black mold and then nothing, and they had to keep trudging around that cake, around and around, singing, until they died in mid-step and their flesh rotted and then faded away, revealing their sad, delicate skeletons.

the Séance & Science Brigade—dedicated to applying "empirical reality to paranormal phenomenon.

The Christmas decorations at the entrance were garish, incomprehensible, partisan. What kind of a country did we live in?

She had a nice laugh, even as she was using it as a weapon against him.

Another week passes into grey oblivion. You're a slow dream, an autumn freeze, a ship on the doldrums. Thoughts come slow and ponderous, like deep sea fish floating heavy and memory-bound to the surface; coelacanth reborn.

surely you're enough of an armchair philosopher to realize that everything is a reconstruction of something else? Reality is a desperate and evasive creature.

He had brand-new pink-jade biogem eyes, and they made him look like a geriatric rabbit.

Since Borne never displayed any kind of threatening behavior, I never thought to take him as a threat. Even calling Borne a "he" began to feel faintly ridiculous as he didn't exhibit the aggression or self-absorption I expected from most males. Instead

Because our minds process information solely through analogy and categorization, we are often defeated when presented with something that fits no category.

Desolation tries to colonize you.

Once, we were close and close-knit, but now we are unmoored islands, each alone, each a separate planet, drifting farther and farther away, content to turn ever inward . . . This is no idle solipsism; it has taken on the fragile brightness of truth. Cities turned from cities, self-devouring. Governments fragmenting into fragments of fragments. Entertainment become a solitary diversion. Solo adventures.

He knew, too, that nukes were locked in on Area X from the nearest silos, military satellites keeping watch from above.

I had the unsettling thought that the natural world around me had become a kind of camouflage.

Control said nothing, had said nothing for quite some time as if he didn't trust words anymore. Or had begun to cherish the answers silence gave him.

What would you have done, reader, who has been able to follow me like the Magician followed me, invisible and ever-watchful and without consequence? *

You can't physically fear a doll only a foot and a half high.

A voice came to him as if from a dark, empty well lined with moss. A voice saying his name, telling him to answer a question.

You don't know this, 'cause you're too young," came the usual lecture, "but politicians run all the big scams. Government's the thief of all time. That's why it tries so hard to catch thieves—it doesn't like the competition.

Democracy is not enough because it is never really Democracy. The -ism that will fix this has not been written down because it exists in what remains of the world beyond us and we cannot read that language. So we are left with flawed ways of thinking, mechanical ways, that work against the very organic nature of our brains. We have built so many toxic constructs, we cannot see through the latticework.

surely by now you realize that you can't trust anyone. But why not take a chance?' *

Everything around you—your office, the conversation in the corridors, the view from Beyond Reach—has acquired a kind of compelling sheen to it, a clarity that comes from knowing you will soon be gone.

Before he'd arrived, Control had imagined himself flying free above the Southern Reach, swooping down from some remote perch to manage things. That wasn't going to happen. Already his wings were burning up and he felt more like some ponderous moaning creature trapped in the mire.

I built up a portrait of the husband as a good guy, a humble guy. A guy who was a little boring. Who people liked because he was a little boring. There are worse things than being a little boring. Although not many.

In some unquantifiable way, too, you believe Lowry's approach is pushing the Southern Reach farther away from the answers. Like an astronaut headed into the oblivion of vast and empty space who, in flailing about, only speeds up the moment when he is beyond rescue.