Quotes from Jeff Vandermeer

Was he the woman with no clue where the ant was or the ant, unaware it was on the woman?

As I left the landing, I had the peculiar thought that I was not the first to pocket the photo, that someone would always come behind to replace it, to circle the lighthouse keeper again.

It was as if a different person put the key in the ignition and drove away from everything that was familiar. There was no going back now. There was no going forward either. He was going in sideways, sort of, and as frightening as that was, there was the thrill...

pretending often leads to becoming a reasonable facsimile of what you mimic, even if only from a distance.

Perhaps [he had] persevered for too long, in the face of too many obstacles, his hair proof of his tenacity - the stark black streaked with white or, in certain light, stark white shot through with black, each strand of white attributable to the jungle fever (so cold it burned, his skin glacial), each strand of black a testament to being alive afterwards.

My free will was compromised, if only by the severe temptation of the unknown.

Was I in the end stages of some prolonged form of annihilation?

There are certain kinds of deaths that one should not be expected to relive, certain kinds of connections so deep that when they are broken you feel the snap of the link inside you.

The fish rots from the head." Fish rotted all over, cell corruption being nonhierarchical and not caste-driven, but point taken.

I was alive, and from past experience I knew in time I would forget enough to again pretend that we could someday be free.

Give back to that which gave to you, came the thought, not knowing what I might be feeding, or what it meant for the collection of cells and thoughts that comprised me.

It's not being hurt that hurts,' Borne said.

After reading the journal, I was left with the comfort of that essential recurring image of my husband putting out to sea in a boat he had rebuilt, out through the crashing surf to the calm just beyond. Of him following the coastline north, alone, seeking in that experience the joy of small moments remembered from happier days. It made me fiercely proud of him. It showed resolve. It showed bravery. It bound him to me in a more intimate way than we had ever seemed to have while together.

Borne made me happy, but happiness never made anyone less stupid

Let me tell you what happens when you burn a person's body, pull out all of his teeth, glue his head to a plate, and shove a bomb in his ear. You become that person's object of undying hatred.

Always, as I looked back, I could see that there had been an almost willful intent to obscure, to misdirect, disguised as concern that we not be frightened or overwhelmed.

There was a gleam in her eye now that I did not like, that promised damage. "I want you to think about something. You might be immune to hypnosis- you might- but what about the veil already in place? What if I removed that veil so you could access your own memories of crossing the border?" the psychologist asked. "Would you like that, Little Flame? Would you like it or would you go mad?

What if an infection was a message, a brightness a kind of symphony? As a defense? An odd form of communication? If so, the message had not been received, would probably never be received, the message buried in the transformation itself. Having to reach for such banal answers because of a lack of imagination, because human beings couldn't even put themselves in the mind of a cormorant or an owl or a whale or a bumblebee.

In an emergency, save the scientists.

Perhaps only I could truly make Wick a person, by forgiving him, and if I forgave him, if I showed I forgave him, then maybe we could be people together.

If people were not by nature insane and resistant to self-improvement or therapy

the shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear Ã¢â'¬Â¦

The scrawled letters form words, the words form lines, the lines form a poem. Your eyes scanning across the page give the poem life.

I didn't answer her. All I could have said was I don't know, a sentence that was becoming a kind of witness to our own ignorance or incompetence. Or both.