Meg Elison > Quotes

“It does no good to tell a beautiful woman how beautiful she is. If she already knows, it gives her power over the fool who tells her. If she does not, there is nothing that can be said to make her believe it. Dusty did not know everything, but she knew that.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“There is no argument to be had with faith.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“Find some people, wish you were alone. Live alone, wish for people.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“Scent is the key to the door of memory.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“I would be happy to defend you ladies,” Duke said with a shine in his eyes. Every man on earth thinks his dick is magic. Alex could hear Roxanne saying it in her head the day they had met.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“What disease cannot do, people accomplish with astonishing ease.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“Before the plague, women were rulers and peacekeepers and cooks and dancers and whatever they wanted to be. And they had medicine that made it impossible to get pregnant. They were free. And now they’re property almost everywhere, raped to death and sold to monsters by monsters.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“It does no good to tell a beautiful woman how beautiful she is. If she already knows, it gives her power over the fool who tells her. If she does not, there is nothing that can be said to make her believe it.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“It’s not even dark outside yet, but I am done with the day. I lie there trying to hold it together until the day is done with me.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“Do you like juice?” Martha is holding open the stainless-steel door of her huge refrigerator.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“Sometimes . . . sometimes I think I should just die.” At the end of the sentence, my voice breaks because I am going to laugh myself to death.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“Out in the lost world were hundreds of soldiers who had been sent abroad before the end of it all and could not be brought home. In the wilds of Afghanistan and the ancient cities of Iraq, they were making their way. At bases in Europe, they were holding their ground against the locals only by firepower. When that ran out, they would be taken. Peace corps kids in Africa realized they could not swim home, would never see home again. Tourists all over Asia, the Caribbean, stranded in airports, forgotten in consulates, lived long enough to face the terror of permanence in strange lands. Cruise ships drifted full of plague dead, a few unlucky souls left alive on some.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“When the sirens quit, the rules gave out. Some people had been waiting their whole lives to live lawlessly, and they were the first to take to the streets. Some people knew what would happen; they knew better than to open their doors when they heard cries of help. Other's didn't. What disease cannot do, people accomplish with astonishing ease.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“Time stopped a long time ago. Time was never time at all.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“Scent is the key to the door of memory. For a minute, she let herself live in it.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“This gun is blank and empty, and you can fill the cylinder with anything at all. You can pack it with dirt or fill it with bullets. You can change the world forever, depending on where you point it. You can leave behind terror or justice. You can be as important as the Unnamed, or as lost as any of the men she put down with it. You hear?” Etta”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“They lit candles against the dark and waited. Without birth, life is only that wait.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“I think that in the old world, women were slaves. Maybe not like they are now, but somebody needed that vest. Somebody needed her pills or her rings to keep from getting pregnant. Maybe slavery just looked nicer back then.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“Men aren’t rational, you know.” He put his hands at his hips and leaned back a little. “It’s not our fault, it just how we’re made. We don’t bleed like women, so we have to find ways to bleed like men. It leads us into foolhardy things. Like the wars of the old world.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“You didn’t see me because you think there are only two kinds of things in the world. Men and women. Good and evil. Slavers and rescuers. You’ve seen more of the world than I have, but you know less about it. There’s more in this world than you can even dream about, Eddy.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“Nobody chooses to be a victim, but after a lifetime of practice, it just happens.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“Some people had been waiting their whole lives to live lawlessly, and they were the first to take to the streets. Some people knew that would happen; they knew better than to open their doors when they heard cries of help. Others didn’t. What disease cannot do, people accomplish with astonishing ease.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“Still a midwife. Thing being born is the world. New, ugly baby world. Mission,”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“One by one, they were lost and found.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“I am the dolphin,”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“the mushrooms in Andy’s dresser, making their shadows long like giants behind them. “Here we see a member of the fungus kingdom, genus and species unknown. Here’s the cap, the stalk, the gills that hold the reproductive spores, and the volva here at the bottom.” I”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“The only primate in this biome right now is me. Homo sapiens, the smartest thing on two legs.” I film my feet, sinking into the gray swamp of newspaper, with the black water rising around my toes. I set the camera down on the sink and film myself siphoning the bucket water into the tub and then set it down again in the kitchen to show how I forage for food. Opportunistic feeder. Omnivorous primate. Delicious”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“cooking an assortment of pupusas and”
― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

“You can't treat all men like the enemy even though the enemy is always a man.”
― Meg Elison, Number One Fan

“They’re from CPS and they came to take him away. The clipboard people. I’m holding on to myself with both hands. If I come up now, they’ll take us both.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla