405 Quotes by Jeff VanderMeer

We all just want to be people, and none of us know what that really means.

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 didn’t need him, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be.

People who asked questions didn’t necessary like being asked questions.

I really wanted to lose myself. People my entire life have told me I am too much in control, but that has never been the case. I have never truly been in control, have never wanted control.

Honesty was often just a way of being cruel.

But then what? What occurs after revelation and paralysis? Either death or a slow and certain thawing. A returning to the physical world.

I see music as an aid. It overcomes my internal editor, especially when the music evokes the character or the mood I’m trying to build.

Become a type, no one saw you. Paranoid thought: What better disguise? But disguise for what?

I do not know how this thorn got here or from how far away it came, but by luck or fate or design at some point it found the lighthouse keeper and did not let him go. How long he had as it remade him, repurposed him, is a mystery. There was no one to observe, to bear witness – until thirty years later a biologist catches a glimpse of him and speculates on what he might have become. Catalyst. Spark. Engine.