Quotes from Jeff Vandermeer

My husband in the kitchen never looked like anything other than a cheerful Kodiak trained in the glories of French cuisine, a glass of Malbec held careless in one hairy paw and a knife in the other.

in the off-season, when even the beach is a poem about loneliness.

Somehow Charlie looked so good in that moment, putting on his jacket. Saul clasped him tight before he could get away. The weight of the man in his arms. The feel of Charlie's rough shave that he loved so much. The tart surprise of Charlie's lip balm against his cheek. Held him for an extra moment, trying to preserve all of it, as a bulwark against whatever had just happened. Then, too soon, Charlie was gone, out the door, into the night, headed for the boat.

I could snap any number of men over my knee.

I find it obscene that countries have fallen apart and people are now organized on the basis of the order of their molecules and the waves they emit. I

Czasem inni ludzie dajÄ… ci swoje Å›wiatÅ'o, które - jeÅ›li nikomu na nich nie zale?y - mo?e przygasa? i by? ledwo widoczne. Dlatego ?e dali go za du?o i nic nie zostaÅ'o dla nich.

A ghost bird might be a hawk in one place, a crow in another, depending on the context. The sparrow that shot up into the blue sky one morning might transform mid-flight into an osprey the next. This was the way of things here. There were no reasons so mighty that they could override the desire to be in accord with the tides and the passage of seasons and the rhythms underlying everything around me.

Wolno?? mog?a ci? oddali? od tego, czego szukasz, zamiast ci? do tego zbli?y?.

Jedynym rozwiÄ…zaniem dla Å›rodowiska naturalnego jest zaniedbanie, które wymaga naszego upadku.

The gist had been that institutions, even individual departments in governments, were the concrete embodiments of not just ideas or opinions but also of attitudes and emotions. Like hate or empathy, statements such as "immigrants need to learn English or they're not really citizens" or "all mental patients deserve our respect.

The body did not exist separate from the soul because the soul didn't exist.

That took less hubris than thinking this was a message from on high.

I'm not an answering machine—I don't have a message for you! What I have for you is a story.

She knew where it would all lead, what it always led to in human beings—a decision about what to do. What are we going to do? Where do we go from here? How do we move forward? What is our mission now? As if purpose could solve everything, could take the outlines of what was missing and by sheer will invoke it, make it appear, bring it back to life.

Someone was breathing. Behind him. Someone was breathing on his neck. The knowledge froze him, froze the cry of "Jesus fuck!" in his throat. He turned with an incredible slowness..

The intimacy that salamanders have with their environment forces them to be sentinels of environmental change.

It is less than five hundred years since an entire half of the world was discovered. It is less than two hundred years since the discovery of the last continent. The sciences of chemistry and physics go back scarcely one century.

She watched us go with envious fear.

It is a curious fact of nature that that which is in plain view is oft best hidden. I

What could she do? Nothing. Nor did she want to. There was a choice in not making a choice. She released the sphere, let it hover there in the air.

Sabon further speculates that Glaring's embezzlement had been discovered and was used as leverage to make him forge the journal pages, for otherwise, some of his relatives having disappeared in the Silence, he would have been disinclined to suppress evidence as to mushroom dweller involvement.127

Perhaps there is no shame in this, perhaps I can bear this, fight this. To give in but not give up. And projected back out behind him, toward the sea, Saul unable to say the name, just three simple words that seemed so inadequate, and yet they were all he had left to use.

And man is the greatest killer, the greatest hunter of them all. The whole world of nature knows man for the irresistible master. The roar of his gun, the cunning of his trap, the strength and agility of his arm place all else beneath him. Should man then be treated by nature differently from the other dominants, the army ants and the wasps? It

This is what happens, perhaps, if you have been studying something so long that you can tell one sea anemone from another in an instant, could have picked out any denizen of those tidal pools from a lineup if it had committed a crime.