Jeff Vandermeer > Quotes

“Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives while from the dimlit halls of other places forms that never were and never could be writhe for the impatience of the few who never saw what could have been. In the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe and in the darkness of that which is golden shall split open to reveal the revelation of the fatal softness in the earth. The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear, but whether it decays under the earth or above on green fields, or out to sea or in the very air, all shall come to revelation, and to revel, in the knowledge of the strangling fruit—and the hand of the sinner shall rejoice, for there is no sin in shadow or in light that the seeds of the dead cannot forgive. And there shall be in the planting in the shadows a grace and a mercy from which shall blossom dark flowers, and their teeth shall devour and sustain and herald the passing of an age. That which dies shall still know life in death for all that decays is not forgotten and reanimated it shall walk the world in the bliss of not-knowing. And then there shall be a fire that knows the naming of you, and in the presence of the strangling fruit, its dark flame shall acquire every part of you that remains.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“That's how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“Silence creates its own violence.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what is a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“A circle looks at a square and sees a badly made circle.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Authority

“There are certain kinds of deaths that one should not be expected to re-live, certain kinds of connections that are so deep that when broken you feel the snap of the link inside you.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“We all live in a kind of continuous dream,” I told him. “When we wake, it is because something, some event, some pinprick even, disturbs the edges of what we’ve taken as reality.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“Perhaps my only real expertise, my only talent, is to endure beyond the endurable.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“You could know the what of something forever and never discover the why.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Acceptance

“You can either waste time worrying about a death that might not come or concentrate on what’s left to you.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“I am walking forever on the path from the border to base camp. It is taking a long time, and I know it will take even longer to get back. There is no one with me. I am all by myself. The trees are not trees the birds are not birds and I am not me but just something that has been walking for a very long time…”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“[W]hen you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“What can you do when your five senses are not enough?”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“We all just want to be people, and none of us know what that really means.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Borne

“We were neither what we had been nor what we would become once we reached our destination.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“When you are too close to the center of a mystery there is no way to pull back and see the shape of it entire.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“I am just the biologist; I don’t require any of this to have a deeper meaning. I am aware that all of this speculation is incomplete, inexact, inaccurate, useless. If I don’t have real answers, it is because we still don’t know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“I loved him, but I didn’t need him, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“At the time, I was seeking oblivion, and I sought in those blank, anonymous faces, even the most painfully familiar, a kind of benign escape. A death that would not mean being dead.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“This part I will do alone, leaving you behind. Don’t follow. I’m well beyond you now, and traveling very fast.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“I think you’re confusing suicide with self-destruction, and they’re very different. Almost none of us commit suicide, whereas almost all of us self-destruct. Somehow. In some part of our lives. We drink, or take drugs, or destabilize the happy job”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“Slowly, painfully, I realized what I had been reading from the very first words of his journal. My husband had had an inner life that went beyond his gregarious exterior, and if I had known enough to let him inside my guard, I might have understood this fact. Except I hadn’t, of course. I had let tidal pools and fungi that could devour plastic inside my guard, but not him. Of all the aspects of the journal, this ate at me the most. He had created his share of our problems—by pushing me too hard, by wanting too much, by trying to see something in me that didn’t exist. But I could have met him partway and retained my sovereignty. And now it was too late.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“Bodies could be beacons, too, Saul knew. A lighthouse was a fixed beacon for a fixed purpose; a person was a moving one. But people still emanated light in their way, still shone across the miles as a warning, an invitation, or even just a static signal. People opened up so they became a brightness, or they went dark. They turned their light inward sometimes, so you couldn’t see it, because they had no other choice.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Acceptance

“I looked not for shooting stars but for fixed ones, and I would try to imagine what kind of life lived in those celestial tidal pools so far from us.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“That's the problem with people who are not human. You can't tell how badly they're hurt, or how much they need your help, and until you ask, they don't always know how to tell you.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Borne

“I had long ago stopped believing in promises. Biological imperatives, yes. Environmental factors, yes. Promises, no.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“Has there always been someone like me to bury the bodies, to have regrets, to carry on after everyone else was dead?”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation