37 Quotes by David Vann

This is what I’ve always loved about a city, all the worlds hidden away inside, largest of aquariums.

There must be at least one god not filled with rage.

Born to destroy kings, born to reshape the world, born to horrify and break and remake, born to endure and never be erased. Hekate Medea, more than god and more than woman, alive now, in the time of origin.

Anything is possible with a parent. Parents are gods. They make us and they destroy us. They warp the world and remake it in their own shape, and that's the world we know forever after. It's the only world. We can't see what it might have looked like otherwise.

If it had lips, we'd feel closer to it. All we need are eyes and lips, apparently, and we think we can say hello. I don't think I realized that before, how much we need the world to look like us.

She has done this for Jason and will do more, she knows. Her brother dismembered at her feet. This is how the world begins.

Absurdity is all that makes grief bearable.

Anything is possible with a parent. Parents are gods. They make us and they destroy us. They warp the world and remake it in their own shape, and that’s the world we know forever after. It’s the only world. We can’t see what it might have looked like otherwise.

The dead reaching for us, needing us, but this isn’t true. There’s only us reaching for them, trying to find ourselves.