Daniel Kraus > Quotes

“Unable to perceive the shape of you, I find you all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with your love, it humbles my heart, for you are everywhere.”
― Daniel Kraus, The Shape of Water

“Jay's not sure he believes in therapy. He definitely doesn't believe in closure. People aren't doors. They're whole floor plans, entire labyrinths, and the harder you try to escape, the more lost inside them you become.”
― Daniel Kraus, Whalefall

“No one carries the best parts of themselves. The best parts are those held inside of others.”
― Daniel Kraus, Whalefall

“Darkness is a defining characteristic of Rotters. But it’s worthy to remember that darkness is just that—it’s dark—and what is being concealed in the dark is not just the horrible and fearsome, it’s also the inspirational and moving. Horror means nothing without happiness; dark means nothing without light. Rotters may make you feel scared, but hopefully it will also make you simply feel. It’s that kind of book, or at least I hope it is.”
― Daniel Kraus, Rotters

“(We are sorry we never asked questions)
(We wanted to know but were afraid)
"Of what?"
(Answers to questions have weight)
(And we wanted to stay light)
(We are sorry)”
― Daniel Kraus, Whalefall

“What does it matter which nations win which wars? Future wars will reverse all gains. God is on no one’s side,”
― Daniel Kraus, Angel Down

“and Bagger, already weighed down in mud and blood, further heavies in the dreary certainty that the shriek won't ever end, just like the war won't ever end, like the carnage won't ever end, it's a sentence in a book careening without periods, gasping with too many commas, a sentence that, one begun, can't ever be stopped, a sentence doomed to loop back on itself to form a terrible black wheel that, sooner or later, will drag each and every person to their grave,”
― Daniel Kraus, Angel Down

“Seventy percent of the planet is water. Most of that water is deep ocean. The origin of everything. Less than 5 percent of the deep ocean is mapped. Humans know more about Mars. Anything could be down there. Therefore, everything is.”
― Daniel Kraus, Whalefall

“I don't like anyone. I don't understand why that's so difficult for people to understand.”
― Daniel Kraus, The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Vol. 1: At the Edge of Empire

“What you do with your time alive defines you, Reader, but hear me, I beg you, when I say that you are not done being defined.”
― Daniel Kraus, The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Vol. 2: Empire Decayed

“It's funny, isn't it? While we were distracted by the silly scraps that make up human history, you and I became eternal, impervious to rot, infinity itself.”
― Daniel Kraus, The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Vol. 2: Empire Decayed

“countries carved into furious parcels and technology matured to a stage of perpetual regeneration, an entire industrial complex, the hatreds of one age inherited by the next, the next, the next, broadcasted, promulgated, and liked via glass screens yet to be invented but inside which we see our barbarity reflected,”
― Daniel Kraus, Angel Down

“Anomalies like me exist all around the world. So when does an anomaly quit being an anomaly and start being just the way things happen to be?”
― Daniel Kraus, The Shape of Water

“A single life is nothing but a spark. The explosion is everything after death, the generations of reverberation. Every consumed morsel of your body, your wisdom, your kindness, your art, is another bid for perfection, a chance to get it right this time, or next time, or the time after that.”
― Daniel Kraus, Whalefall

“Let me tell you the lesson of this prophet. Truth never outweighs mercy.”
― Daniel Kraus, Whalefall

“What always felt brutal to Jay about the natural world now feels like its most elegant design. We all eat each other, like Hewey said. That's why we live forever.”
― Daniel Kraus, Whalefall

“If you can’t know what’s right in front of you, you can’t know what’s beyond you.”
― Daniel Kraus, Whalefall

“Jay didn’t find his dad’s remains.
He is his dad’s remains.
He breathes sleepy at last.”
― daniel kraus, Whalefall

“Genesis incorrect after all, life doesn’t beget life, it’s death that begets death, so foundational a principle it has become civilization’s engine, an inferno of grief that, nut by screw by rivet, is refashioned into outrage and hysteria and vengeance and moral polarity, a cycle perfected by the so-called War to End All Wars, which, Bagger understands with horror, is really the War to Begin All Wars,”
― Daniel Kraus, Angel Down

“Don’t sons have responsibilities, too? The answer is yes, they do. To hold their fathers accountable.”
― Daniel Kraus, Whalefall

“If nothing else, books are conversations from beyond the grave. Am I anything at all, Reader, besides this manuscript you hold?”
― Daniel Kraus, The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Vol. 2: Empire Decayed

“Steinbeck called this ‘the hour of the pearl.’ ” It’s dusk, the dusk of dusk, an unblurred luster.”
― Daniel Kraus, Whalefall

“...and though the world may be damned as a result, what's the world even worth without the one person Bagger wants in it”
― Daniel Kraus, Angel Down

“Fantasies. Indulge them at your peril.”
― Daniel Kraus, The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Vol. 1: At the Edge of Empire

“There need be no struggle when we are all the same weight.”
― Daniel Kraus, Whalefall

“The simple sharing of hope, its weight not so heavy after all, is a wonder.”
― Daniel Kraus, Whalefall

“and he sputters into Arno’s ear, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” not even sure which transgression he’s apologizing for, there’s been so many in such a short, ugly time, and though he knows what this clinch looks like to any doughboy who spies them behind the hailstorm of detonated dirt, two chickenshits holding each other in the last chickenshit seconds of their chickenshit lives, he doesn’t care, he’s worked with chickens before and they happen to be Earth’s bravest beasts,”
― Daniel Kraus, Angel Down

“That’s all right. Every hour of the pearl, you realize you’ve lost pages too. More and more pages until”—he whistles—“you’re all gone.”
― Daniel Kraus, Whalefall

“A single life is nothing but a spark. The explosion is everything after death, the generations of reverberation. Every consumed morsel of your body, your wisdom, your kindness, your art, is another bid for perfection, a chance to get it right this time, or next time, or the time after that. There is no death.”
― Daniel Kraus, Whalefall

“Ah, the molasses of emotion. How it sugars the most dangerous of decisions.”
― Daniel Kraus, The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Vol. 1: At the Edge of Empire