222 Quotes by Emily St. John Mandel

It is possible to disappear in the space between countries.

First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.

It is possible to leave so much out of any given story.

Being alive is a risk.

She loved details, and the world, and inevitably became lost in both. Violently beautiful sunsets could reduce her to tears. She was virtually incapacitated by fireflies.

She moved over the surface of life the way figure skaters move, fast and choreographed, but she never broke through the ice, she never pierced the surface and descended into those awful beautiful waters, she was never submerged and she never learned to swim in those currents, these currents: all the shadows and light and splendorous horrors that make up the riptides of life on earth.

No one ever thinks they’re awful, even people who really actually are. It’s some sort of survival mechanism.

A tired king at the end of his reign, perhaps not as sharp as he had been, contemplating a disastrous division of his kingdom.

He’d expected that at the very least he’d be able to slip into a decent social scene, but the problem with dropping out of the world is that that world moves on without you, and between the time spent on an all-consuming substance and the time spent working soul-crushing retail jobs while he tried not to think about the substance and the time spent in hospitals and rehab facilities, Paul was twenty-three years old and looked older.