Quotes from Jeff Vandermeer

The word "Annihilation" was followed by "help induce immediate suicide." We had all been given self-destruct buttons, but the only one who could push them was dead.

Would that not be the final humbling of the human condition? That the trees and birds, the fox and the rabbit, the wolf and the deer Ã¢â'¬Â¦ reach a point at which they do not even notice us, as we are transformed.

You see, if the function of a tool is removed, you have Art. Very witty, don't you think?

Interferivamo con tutto, non lasciavamo stare nulla [...]. Non potevamo accettare che ci fosse qualcosa di intatto. [...] Non li lasciavamo stare neanche dopo la morte.

What's wrong with asking questions?" "Nothing." Everything. Once the questions snuck in, whatever had been certain became uncertain. Questions opened the way for doubt. His father had told him that. "Don't let them ask questions. You're already giving them the answers, even if they don't know it.

Others among them lay out under the stars at night and recorded their dreams as if they were transmissions from beyond. As a kind of fiction, it enlivened my reading but was otherwise worthless.

Ghost bird, do you love me?" he whispered once in the dark, before he left for his expedition training, even though he was the ghost. "Ghost bird, do you need me?" I loved him, but I did not need him, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be.

When I saw those hundreds of journals I felt for a long moment that I had become that old biologist after all. That's how the madness of the world tries to colonize you from the outside in, forcing you to live in it's reality.

Dobbiamo amare ciò che è stato ferito, perché tutto è stato ferito. E amare le ferite vuol dire avere a cuore il mondo. Vuol dire essere vivi. Vuol dire che il mondo è vivo.

When our poor, faultily sensitive vision can perceive a thing, we say that it is visible. When the nerves of touch can feel it, we say that it is tangible. Yet I tell you there are beings intangible to our physical sense, yet whose presence is felt by the spirit

The way back was harder, and no getting around that-no truth I learned struggling back, except that life is struggle. It placed me in some gray realm beyond, a landscape of exertion and anguish. I had nothing left to give, and yet still I had something left it give.

With the tower, we knew none of these things. We could not intuit its full outline. We had no sense of its purpose. And now that we had begun to descend into it, the tower still failed to reveal any hint of these things. The psychologist might recite the measurements of the "top" of the tower, but those numbers meant nothing, had no wider context. Without context, clinging to those numbers was a form of madness.

But when you can't escape the seconds, when you are sure you are going to die before you can get free, some things don't mean very much anymore.

the species that had given Area X its purpose was gone.

Moss the shape of Grayson, all around Grayson, covering Grayson like a second skin. Showing, kiss by kiss, the beauty of Grayson to Grayson, who had never thought herself beautiful. That she was beautiful. All of Moss kissing all of her and Grayson seeing herself through Moss's eyes. Reborn in that moment.

What occurs after revelation and paralysis? Either death or a slow and certain thawing.

You tell yourself this is no less or more real than bowling at Chipper's.[...] That this moment is the same as every other moment, that it makes no difference to the atoms, to the air, to the creature whose walls breathe all around you.

Se não tenho respostas verdadeiras é porque ainda não sabemos que perguntas devemos fazer. Nossos instrumentos são inúteis; nossa metodologia, defeituosa; nossas motivações, egoístas.

The only solution to the environment is neglect, which requires our collapse." A

Sometimes you need to know when to go on to the next thing--for the sake of other people.

Each word a world, a world bleeding through from some other place, a conduit and an entry point, if you only knew how to use them, the coordinates the biologist now used in her far journeying. Each sentence a merciless healing, a ruthless rebuilding that could not be denied.

he'd said they were studying the "taywah" or "terror" of the region, even when he'd spelled it out as t-e-r-r-o-i-r.

Should she somehow think that what came next

Windows plastered with advertisements for all the things we were supposed to want that were killing us.