405 Quotes by Jeff VanderMeer

Would that not be the final humbling of the human condition? That the trees and birds, the fox and the rabbit, the wolf and the deer... reach a point at which they do not even notice us, as we are transformed.

What’s wrong with asking questions?” “Nothing.” Everything. Once the questions snuck in, whatever had been certain became uncertain. Questions opened the way for doubt. His father had told him that. “Don’t let them ask questions. You’re already giving them the answers, even if they don’t know it.” “But you’re curious, too,” she said. “Why do you say that?” “You guard the light. And light sees everything.

Early on, I had thought Wick was reaching for a body across the bed. But, for a long time, he had been reaching for me – for the person called Rachel, who did indeed, in the end, love back the person name Wick.

Sometimes I feel as if we live in hell and don’t even realize it. The lacerations are endless. The lies we accept, the rituals we perform. All these useless acts.

He that feels pure, let him cast the first stone.

But when you’ve lived in a place this long, no walk can occur solely in the present. Every street, every building, appears to you encrusted with memories, with perspectives that betray your age, your cynicism, your sentimentality, or your lack of feeling where you should feel something.

That is the tragedy of everyday life: when you are in it, you can never see your self clearly.

Be still that human need. To fill the silence with words.

Angela Carter’s fiction blew me away and really instilled a passion for writing, bolstered by Vladimir Nabokov. But in general, I can’t point to any one thing. I just always loved books and writing.