Joel Lane > Quotes

“It's odd how much our perception of cities owes to stories and films.We talk about 'Dickensian' London as if it had some real existence beyond the page. Deep down, despite the evidence of our lives, we can't really believe that anything is ever made up.”
― Joel Lane, The Witnesses Are Gone

“People mostly kept to themselves, locked in with television and a shelf of videos that kept the past alive.”
― Joel Lane, The Earth Wire and Other Stories

“You know,’ he said at last, ‘that was true until you said it.”
― Joel Lane, The Earth Wire and Other Stories

“We were told to be on our guard against ‘terrorist reprisals’. It wasn’t terrorism when US planes bombed a wedding party, or when they wiped out an entire village as a gesture of frustration because Bin Laden had slipped through their hands. But it would be terrorism if the enemy did that to”
― Joel Lane, The Witnesses Are Gone

“The worst thing about fame is that people think they own you.”
― Joel Lane, The Terrible Changes

“The lights were so low by then that all I could see of Carly was a ghost of her face, like a paper mask that her cigarette might set on fire.”
― Joel Lane, Do Not Pass Go

“nothing gets you nothing. nothing, anyway, beyond your mounting sense of instability and alienation.”
― Joel Lane, The Witnesses Are Gone

“We were told to be on our guard against ‘terrorist reprisals’. It wasn’t terrorism when US planes bombed a wedding party, or when they wiped out an entire village as a gesture of frustration because Bin Laden had slipped through their hands. But it would be terrorism if the enemy did that to us.”
― Joel Lane, The Witnesses Are Gone

“The greatest human fear is not "fear of the unknown" (as some hapless Poe wannabe claimed), but the fear of death. The unknown can become the known, but death will never cease to be inevitable.”
― Joel Lane, The Terrible Changes