Jason Gurley > Quotes

“Most souls wait for a very long time. In the end, the peace they seek is usually within themselves, not within the confines of the world they left.”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“This is how the darkness is. It knows nothing else. It fills crevices, pushing into the finest, narrowest corners, ascribing no meaning to the events that it carries, but birthing and then swallowing them again as they expire.”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“There should be someone in the world who loves you despite you,” she whispers to her mother.”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“It is only a question. It changes nothing that is not already true.”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“Time is a river, and it flows in a circle. I love you.”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“Reality is a terrific drug.”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“because when a person has a dream that they've dreamed of their whole life, and they don't get a single chance to accomplish it in the single life that belongs to them, they just sort of wither inside,”
― Jason Gurley, The Settlers

“There are so many demons.  Agnes tips the bottle back and her eyes flutter closed, and she swallows, and swallows again, and the burn of it tells her it will be okay, that everything will be just fine, because the burn is always followed by the dark, and the dark is followed by— Peace. Or something very much like it.  She drinks, and eventually her grip loosens on the bottle, and she slips into that dark where Esmerelda, where Eleanor, where nobody else is permitted.”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“benches—she was possessive of her mornings, of the quiet before her day became a thing owned by other people—but”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“because when a person has a dream that they've dreamed of their whole life, and they don't get a single chance to accomplish it in the single life that belongs to them, they just sort of wither inside, Micah, they dry up and rot on the inside, and the nice thing is that nobody can see it on the outside, not really well, so everybody else can pretend that everything is okay. But not me, Micah. I'll get the great pleasure of dying a little inside every single day that you get to have the life you want, and I have to put my own dreams in a fucking box and fucking burn it.”
― Jason Gurley, The Settlers

“if you had to wait for a very long time to receive a message from someone, perhaps when you responded, you would take more care with your words, and write things of greater value.”
― Jason Gurley, The Settlers

“She cannot relax. The world around her is a living, breathing metaphor. The boat is her mother’s frail body, groaning under Eleanor’s weight. The sea is the poison that waits below, ready to consume her when she stumbles. The island is death, and she carves a resolute path—“a straight shot,” as Jack said—to death’s very door. Eleanor”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“I think a little break will put things in perspective, Micah. But it's not going to change my point.  Then why take a break? We'll be in the same place then that we are now. Because I'm tired of sleeping badly because we're both all worked-up over this. It'll be good for us. You need the break, too.  I don't. I don't want it.”
― Jason Gurley, The Settlers

“And it is miserable to think that this is what adulthood is like: two people, cowering behind their grief, lashing out at each other like injured animals.”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“Her mother will die, but it will not be because death has found her mother. It will be because her mother dared death to come visit.”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“a well of beauty tucked away inside the girl, masked by drawn expressions and tired shoulders. She carries unseen weights.”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“No. Every time we fight, if there's a real problem we can't work out, you play-act this emotional psychobabble moment of discovery, like you've just come to terms with something about yourself. But it's a goddamn trick, Micah. I'm supposed to see how vulnerable you are, and come running to you and comfort you. But it's just a diversion. I don't even think you know you're doing it.”
― Jason Gurley, The Settlers

“There should be someone in the world who loves you despite you,”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“No. No, that's what you want. I know. You want me to sulk for a couple of days, then get over it, and we'll get old and wrinkly and pretend that there was never a time when we fought about this. You might actually forget about it for real. In fact, I know you will. That's what you do. You've got one big-ass rug in your brain, Micah, and you're really good at sweeping shit under it that you never want to see again.”
― Jason Gurley, The Settlers

“an atom, and the resulting detonation blinded them all.”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“I missed the moonlight, the stars. There were times I forgot that there was an entire universe above the clouds. It was as if a shroud had been pulled around the Earth. Over time, we would forget everything that we had once struggled so hard to observe and learn and prove. We would forget about Jupiter and its churning storms. We would forget about the Big Dipper, about Halley's comet. We would stumble across telescopes in old department stores and never give them a second look, never wonder about the things they once made large.”
― Jason Gurley, Deep Breath Hold Tight: Stories About the End of Everything

“He puts his palm on her cheek, the first time he has touched her tenderly in years. The warmth is fading from her skin. He can feel it going. He thinks that some of it might enter him, that she will carry on, a part of him.”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“When madmen are left to their own devices, they convert their reality into a sort of hypermadness, until everything feeds their internal distortions.”
― Jason Gurley, The Man Who Ended the World

“space station,”
― Jason Gurley, The Man Who Ended the World

“She has lost track of the days. She has wandered through the valley—perhaps for weeks, perhaps”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“Eve’s voice emanates from the walls of the station in an otherworldly, haunting way, as if she speaks from everywhere and nowhere at once.”
― Jason Gurley, The Caretaker

“Every space movie has a nutjob on the space ship, Henry says. And until you kill the nutjob, everybody's in danger.”
― Jason Gurley, The Man Who Ended the World

“tormentous”
― Jason Gurley, The Man Who Ended the World

“herself from the rains. But through the raw and broken trees she could see the valley, faint beneath a gelatinous fog.  She’s all but certain that she’s falling toward the very same”
― Jason Gurley, Eleanor

“Cutting a person’s throat is not as easy as I thought it would be.”
― Jason Gurley, Deep Breath Hold Tight: Stories About the End of Everything