222 Quotes by Emily St. John Mandel

The more we know about the former world, the better we’ll understand what happened when it fell.

The claustrophobia of the forest. The first few trees visible before her, monochrome contrasts of black shadow and white moonlight, and beyond that an entire continent, wilderness uninterrupted from ocean to ocean with so few people left between the shores.

Miranda opened her eyes in time to see the sunrise. A wash of violent color, pink and streaks of brilliant orange, the container ships on the horizon suspended between the blaze of the sky and the water aflame, the seascape bleeding into confused visions of Station Eleven, its extravagant sunsets the its indigo sea. The lights of the fleet fading into morning, the ocean burning into sky.

People want what was best about the world.

The king stood in a pool of blue light, unmoored.

The thing with the new world,” the tuba had said once, “is it’s just horrifically short on elegance.

Vincent was lovely but not, Olivia had decided, a serious person. Since her late teens she had been mentally dividing people into categories: either you're a serious person, she'd long ago decided, or you're not. A difficulty of her current life was that she was no longer sure which category she fell into.

If another memo could possibly be sent out, this one specific to smokers: You cannot be both an unwashed bohemian and Cary Grant.

Isn't indiscretion the very definition of weakness?