Jeff VanderMeer Quotes

20 Sourced Quotes

Maybe once, early on, he had convinced himself he could do some good, sometimes even imagined he was a mole, getting close so he could strike a blow. Imagined he was in it to defend Ambergris from the enemies that surrounded it. Imagined he was protecting ordinary citizens.
But the truth was he'd been tired, had stopped caring. Broken down from too much fighting, too many things connected to his past. And when that spark, that impulse, had returned, it was too late: he was trapped.

Jeff VanderMeer
When we wake, it is because something, some event, some pinprick even, disturbs the edges of what we've taken as reality.

Jeff VanderMeer
Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough.

Jeff VanderMeer
But what if you discover that the price of purpose is to render invisible so many other things?

Jeff VanderMeer
You could know the what of something forever and never discover the why.

Jeff VanderMeer
The city might be savage, stray dogs might share the streets with grimy urchins whose blank eyes reflected the knowledge that they might soon be covered over, blinded forever, by the same two pennies just begged from some gentleman, and no one in the fuming, fulminous boulevards of trade might know who actually ran Ambergris—or, if anyone ran it at all, but, like a renegade clock, it ran on and wound itself heedless, empowered by the insane weight of its own inertia, the weight of its own citizenry.

Jeff VanderMeer
Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth.

Jeff VanderMeer
It closely resembles the situation that exists within a mental institution: in tight quarters, in similar garb, dissimilar minds attempt to build a consensus reality that, with a monumental effort of empathy, cannot—can never!—take concrete form.

Jeff VanderMeer
Who had the bigger burden? The one who had to watch the other person endure or the one who endured?

Jeff VanderMeer
When they give you things, ask yourself why. When you're grateful to them for giving you the things you should have anyway, ask yourself why.

Jeff VanderMeer
They'll never forget, never forgive, no matter who the enemy is, son. Better just to start a new life. Be someone else.

Jeff VanderMeer
But the fact is I don't care. I haven't cared since I came here, and I will continue not to care until I leave. With as much of Ambergris smoldering behind me as I can manage.

Jeff VanderMeer
I had learned so much about the world that I had decided to withdraw from it.

Jeff VanderMeer
It is the nature of the writer to question the validity of his world and yet rely on his senses to describe it. From what other tension can great literature be born?

Jeff VanderMeer
I could not move or speak for several minutes, frozen in the belief that the book itself had changed and was now writing me.

Jeff VanderMeer
An inordinate love of ritual can be harmful to the soul, unless, of course, in times of great crisis, when ritual can protect the soul from fracture.

Jeff VanderMeer
The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what is a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?

Jeff VanderMeer
A fresh river in a beautiful meadow
Imagined in his mind
The good Painter, who would some day paint it

Jeff VanderMeer
It looked like lively abstract art. Symbols in search of context.

Jeff VanderMeer
Strange, but when he closed his eyes he had an image of the hotel above them restored to its former grandeur. A concierge and porter in the lobby. Someone behind the desk waiting to take his key. Sintra in an evening gown. They'd be about to take a motored vehicle to the opera. The streets would be busy with merchants and people coming home from work. The buildings, the storefronts, would be bright and cheery with lights. Like it had been in those mayfly beautiful moments between wars, before the Rising.

Jeff VanderMeer