Quotes from Jeff Vandermeer

there is a limit to thinking about even a small piece of something monumental. You still see the shadow of the whole rearing up behind you, and you become lost in your thoughts in part from the panic of realizing the size of that imagined leviathan.

The little bird drone watched me from a branch halfway up the oak. Noticing that came as a shock. My husband had been told it was security provided by the HOA. Later, I would ask to see the surveillance footage, be told a glitch had erased it. Meanwhile, it just sat there, a dull pewter jewel with blue plastic wings. Staring at me.

They moved carefully, as though their bodies were brittle glasses – glasses without bottom – waiting to be shattered

Glasses hold liquor, but they never get drunk. Their

Area X was all around them. Area X was contained in no one place or figure.

I had a vision of that last small expedition, the last group, setting out. Maybe it was just a dozen, maybe less. Tried to imagine it as Silvina had. Trying their best to overcome those obstacles. Each one of those individuals on an epic journey. One they never came back from. But the joy. Even then, there must have been moments of joy and of contentment on the journey. Sanctuaries and times of plenty. It wasn't just a winnowing. It was a life.

You couldn't martyr yourself to Area X, you could only disappear trying, and not even be sure of that.

Better not to think of people living here, of it being empty Ã¢â'¬Â¦ and yet now you want someone to remember, to understand what was lost, even if it was little enough.

he de-bugged and de-moused the office ...

I hope to find Area X in Area X.

So long as you don't tell people you don't know something, they'll probably think you know it.

To smell mixed with the strong coffee the faint pleasant scent of cedar from the ceiling's wooden beams. To be quiet and still and have all thought be channeled into observing the lives of creatures that stirred only after Sam had gone to sleep. It felt, over time, like not just a distraction but being part of something that as yet required nothing from her.

Civilization diminishes proportionally to the distance from Paris.

As if somehow the blankness of the walls fed off of silence, and that something might appear in the spaces between our words if we were not careful.

she said not a word because to say anything—anything at all—would be to humiliate him, and she cared more about him than that. And it cost her nothing.

I was thinking, we're kind of distant cousins, aren't we, us and the horses. But compared to that thing up there—we're brothers. You know?

Writing, for me, is like trying to restart an engine that has rested for years, silent and rusting, in an empty lot—choked with water and dirt, infiltrated by ants and spiders and cockroaches. Vines and weeds shoved into it and sprouting out of it. A kind of coughing splutter, an eruption of leaves and dust, a voice that sounds a little like mine but is not the same as it was before;

There had never been a time when all the people everywhere lived in peace. No one had ever had a lasting peace without ignoring atrocity or history, which meant it wasn't lasting at all. Which meant we were an irrational species.

Do you think Area X builds spaceships, too? Do you think Area X traverses interstellar space? Wormholes? Think of something more subtle, something peering through what we think of as reality.

hair-raising attempts at destruction that included stabbings, careful burnings, deprivation of soil and water, introduction of parasites, general neglect, the emanation of hateful vibes, verbal and physical abuse, and much more.

The biologist was coming down the hillside. In all her glory and monstrosity.

He had not expected any of it to be beautiful, but it was beautiful.

Complete knowledge of any alien physiology could be obtained within minutes by Educator Tape, but the skill to use that knowledge—especially in surgery—came only with time.

Funny how even then, as systems failed, flickered out, institutions revealed as paper thin, that so many couldn't bring themselves to believe in anything. That it helped if you didn't. Better to observe the rituals, use the catchphrases. Share your concern.