Jon Fasman > Quotes

“They call it 'the whispering of the stars.' Listen," he said, raising a finger for silence. I could still hear the tinkling and craned my neck to see what it was. Zhensky laughed. "No, here. Look." He formed his mouth into a wide O and exhaled slowly. As he did, I saw the cloud of breath fall in droplets to the ground. That was the sound I heard: our breath falling. "It's a Yakut expression. It means a period of weather so cold that your breath falls frozen to the ground before it can dissipate. The Yakuts say that you should never tell secrets outside during the whispering of the stars, because the words themselves freeze, and in the spring thaw anyone who walks past that spot will be able to hear them.”
― Jon Fasman, The Geographer's Library

“I felt I would live a long, lonely, useless life and die alone and unmissed (did I mention that I never bothered filling out any grad-school
applications?) It’s self-indulgent, I know, but this is what happens to the overachieving but essentially useless children of parents who raised their children to do well on tests but
failed to equip them with the poison-tipped spurs of true ambition.”
― Jon Fasman

“Rainbow dust?" sneered Joe, drawing out each syllable until it snapped from the weight of his contempt.”
― Jon Fasman, The Geographer's Library

“Shall I tell you a joke about languages? Abulfaz asked.
A joke. Yes, okay.
What do you call a Russian who speaks four languages?
I don't know.
A Zionist. What about a Russian who speaks three languages?
I don't know.
A spy. And two? ... No? A nationalist. And only one? ... An inter-nationalist.”
― Jon Fasman, The Geographer's Library

“But it had grown into something else, something that thrilled me even as it frightened me, made me feel that I had finally cracked through the pane of smudged glass, broken the surface of the sea. I finally felt like something other than an observer in my life.”
― Jon Fasman, The Geographer's Library