Jeremy Bates > Quotes

“very far in, very deep.” “How do you know it’s a woman?”
― Jeremy Bates, The Catacombs

“Jeremy”
― Jeremy Bates, The Taste of Fear

“understanding. As they progressed west across the crater floor, they saw more gazelles and zebras and buffalo than she could count. She glassed the grasslands through the binoculars for a bottleneck of Land Rovers, hoping it would indicate a predator sighting. The strategy paid off. The first gathering led them to a chilled-out leopard lounging in the crotch of an acacia tree, the second to a pack of spotted hyenas making whooping-giggling noises while tearing apart the ribcage of an antelope with their bone-crushing jaws.”
― Jeremy Bates, The Taste of Fear

“You are wise to climb Fuji once, but a fool to climb it twice.”
― Jeremy Bates, Suicide Forest

“The walls were smooth and whitewashed a pig-blood pink. Pascal folded the map he’d been studying”
― Jeremy Bates, The Catacombs

“She’d seen his mother. Buddy set Dil on his mother’s bed, which she hadn’t used since he’d slipped a plastic bag over her head while she was watching an old Sean Connery movie twenty months before. She had only been living with him for six weeks then, but it had been six weeks too long. When he’d agreed to care for her, he’d had no idea what he was taking on. He’d figured a bit more cooking, cleaning, ironing, that kind of stuff. The reality was she pissed her bed every night, which meant he had to wash her linens and shower her each morning. Then he’d get home from work only to find she’d pissed herself again, often shitting herself too. Another shower, more laundry. Come dinner he didn’t get a break because the stroke, which had paralyzed much of her body, prevented her from feeding herself. So he’d have to pound her dinner into mush and spoon it into her mouth. In the evening she might signal she needed to use the bathroom instead of letting loose in her diaper. Nevertheless, getting her undressed, on the toilet, cleaning her up—fuck, it was easier to let her soil herself and hose her down in the shower. Needless to say, caring for her simply became too much. But killing her wasn’t the answer. Buddy knew that right after she took her last, agonized breath. Flooded with guilt at what he’d done, he began talking to her, apologizing to her, changing her, bathing her, all the old routines. When her stench became overpowering, he removed her lungs, stomach, liver, intestines, heart, and brain, and treated her body with salt for forty days until no moisture remained. Then he filled the cavities with sawdust from a local”
― Jeremy Bates, The Midnight Book Club Super Box Set

“hearing it here in the catacombs where it happened, in the unprecedented blackness, was borderline terrifying.”
― Jeremy Bates, The Catacombs

“nodded. “If you assume she was lost down there for days without food or water, she would have been weak and dehydrated. She would have been exhausted, mentally and physically. So she snapped.” “Why’d she start running?”
― Jeremy Bates, The Catacombs

“The chamber split into five new passages. Two to our left, three straight ahead, and one to the right. The latter was the largest by far.”
― Jeremy Bates, Mountain of the Dead

“I felt as if I had stepped into a waking nightmare, a world where the impossible was possible. Whatever inner barrier my adult mind had erected to separate reality from fantasy vanished in a heartbeat, and through it flooded a knowledge so dark and cold and inconceivable it left me numb and full of a funereal bleakness.”
― Jeremy Bates, Suicide Forest

“Then Zina stood and produced from her pocket a tangerine, a rare fruit only available for a brief time each year. She kissed him on the cheek and said, “This is from all of us. We’ve been saving it the entire trip.” “Then let’s enjoy it,” he said, peeling the skin. He pulled off a wedge and passed the tangerine to Igor, who sat next to him. “No, comrade,” Igor said. “You enjoy it.” “I will enjoy it most by sharing it with my friends.”
― Jeremy Bates, Mountain of the Dead

“Perhaps hearing the change in her voice, Bandit barked. The hitchhiker jumped, turning in his seat. The boxer barked a second time, louder than the first. “You have a dog?” he said, facing forward again. Under different circumstances, Katrina would have said, “He’s harmless.” Yet”
― Jeremy Bates, White Lies

“I had been completely in the moment, blissfully, ignorantly alive.”
― Jeremy Bates, Suicide Forest

“Chocolate has more than double the caloric density of carbohydrates or protein.”
― Jeremy Bates, Mountain of the Dead

“And he always wanted to do it in public places. Parks, alleyways, in the ocean, with people around.” “And you went with it?” “I have to admit, you get a thrill. And the ocean thing, that was in the Philippines. It’s not like anyone I knew was going to see me.”
― Jeremy Bates, Mountain of the Dead

“Death isn’t picky, doesn’t play favorites. It doesn’t care in which country you were born or how much money you had amassed in your brief existence or how happy you are. It’s supremely patient and rightly so, for it knows you can’t escape its reach. One day you too would be lying on that hospital floor or a stainless-steel gurney in a morgue. It had already won. It would always win. In other words, we were born to lose.”
― Jeremy Bates, Suicide Forest

“sailing”
― Jeremy Bates, The Taste of Fear

“In this enlightened day and age, do humans even need sleep?”
― Jeremy Bates, The Sleep Experiment

“Death is a part of life. Understanding and accepting that makes life more precious.”
― Jeremy Bates, Unpremeditated: A Thrilling Tale of Secrets, Guilt, and Unforeseen Consequences

“were”
― Jeremy Bates, The Taste of Fear

“fight or flight hormone”
― Jeremy Bates, The Taste of Fear

“they trudged on, it became a little cooler. Scarlett was no longer sweating.”
― Jeremy Bates, The Taste of Fear

“The headwinds doubled in force, churning the fresh powder into a wall of uncompromising white that made it impossible to distinguish land from sky.”
― Jeremy Bates, Mountain of the Dead

“why wasn’t he screaming like she had when she came around, screaming in despair and terror at the unjustness of this incarceration, screaming until his throat went raw and he couldn’t scream anymore? He called”
― Jeremy Bates, The Catacombs

“As we circled the small lake, passing the castle-like rock formation beneath the skylight, I spotted a dark crevice in the cliff wall ahead of us.”
― Jeremy Bates, Mountain of the Dead

“becasue”
― Jeremy Bates, The Sleep Experiment

“Akipenda chongo huita kengeza.”
― Jeremy Bates, The Taste of Fear

“Alcohol doesn’t solve any problems, Corey.” “Neither does tea.”
― Jeremy Bates, Mountain of the Dead

“Lev Ivanov, and despite no longer officially entertaining links between the strange orange orbs in the sky and the hikers’ deaths, he still privately pursued such a possibility, and four days before the hikers were to be buried he ordered radiological tests on their organs and clothing.”
― Jeremy Bates, Mountain of the Dead

“About time,” Danièle said, exhaling heavily. “Some quiet.” I said, “You understand why he doesn’t like me, right?” “Who? Pascal? Yes, I told you. Because he has a crush on me.” “Right. So do you think it was a good idea announcing that we’re going to sleep together? I think that’s what he’s pissed about.” “But we are going to sleep together.” “No, we’re not.”
― Jeremy Bates, The Catacombs