Jeff VanderMeer Quotes (24 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Works

Annihilation

Jeff VanderMeer

Finch

Jeff VanderMeer

City of Saints and Madmen

Jeff VanderMeer

Authority

Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer: 24 quotes 0 likes

Famous Jeff VanderMeer Quotes

“That's how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality.”

Jeff VanderMeer book Annihilation

Source: Annihilation

“Silence creates its own violence.”

Jeff VanderMeer book Annihilation

Source: Annihilation

“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 book Annihilation

Source: Annihilation

“The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.”

Jeff VanderMeer book Annihilation

Source: Annihilation

“some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough.”

Jeff VanderMeer book Annihilation

Source: Annihilation

“A circle looks at a square and sees a badly made circle.”

Jeff VanderMeer book Authority

Source: Authority

Jeff VanderMeer Quotes

“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 book Annihilation

Source: Annihilation

Way

“There are certain kinds of deaths that one should not be expected to re-live, certain kinds of connections that are so deep that when broken you feel the snap of the link inside you.”

Jeff VanderMeer book Annihilation

Source: Annihilation

Death , Feeling

“We all live in a kind of continuous dream,” I told him. “When we wake, it is because something, some event, some pinprick even, disturbs the edges of what we’ve taken as reality.”

Jeff VanderMeer book Annihilation

Source: Annihilation

Dreams , Reality

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

Jeff VanderMeer book Finch

Source: Finch (2009), p. 87

Personality

“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 book City of Saints and Madmen

AppendiX, "King Squid", Part III: Expounding with brevity on the pecularities of squid lore, note 32
City of Saints and Madmen (2001–2004)

Reality , Effort

“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 book Finch

Source: Finch (2009), p. 20

Truth , Imagination , Past , Fight

“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 book Finch

Opening epigram
Finch (2009)

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

Jeff VanderMeer book City of Saints and Madmen

"The Transformation of Martin Lake", epigram, p. 130
City of Saints and Madmen (2001–2004)

Beauty , Imagination , Painting

“It looked like lively abstract art. Symbols in search of context.”

Jeff VanderMeer book Finch

Source: Finch (2009), p. 74

Art , Search

“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 book Finch

Source: Finch (2009), p. 122

“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 book Finch

Source: Finch (2009), p. 303

Life , Forgiveness , Forgetting

“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 book City of Saints and Madmen

"The Strange Case of X", p. 196
City of Saints and Madmen (2001–2004)

World , Literature , Question , Nature

“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 book Finch

Source: Finch (2009), p. 325

War , People , Beauty , Home

“Unlike the Cult of the Seven-Edged Star, the Church of the Seven Pointed Star believed that God had seven points rather than seven edges. Therefore, rather than worshipping the journey toward self-realization symbolized by the edges, they worshipped the goals of self-realization as symbolized by the points. […] Adherents to the Church of the Seven-pointed Star used swords with sharp points but no edge, while the Cult of the Seven-Edged Star used swords with sharp edges but no point. Alas, edges proved superior to points in most battles fought in the streets of Nicea. Caroline's followers were forced to either commit sacrilege and switch to edges, or become meals for the ever-present saltwater buzzard. Proving, one could say, the point of the edges.”

Jeff VanderMeer book City of Saints and Madmen

AppendiX, "The Ambergris Glossary", entry for Caroline of the Church of the Seven-Pointed Star
City of Saints and Madmen (2001–2004)

God , Star

“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 book City of Saints and Madmen

"The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris", Ch. 4, p. 122
City of Saints and Madmen (2001–2004)

Love , Soul , Time

“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 book City of Saints and Madmen

AppendiX, "A note from Dr. V to Dr. Simpkin"
City of Saints and Madmen (2001–2004)

Books , Change

“I had learned so much about the world that I had decided to withdraw from it.”

Jeff VanderMeer book Finch

Source: Finch (2009), p. 299

World , Learning

“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 book City of Saints and Madmen

"Dradin, In Love", Ch. 4, p. 48
City of Saints and Madmen (2001–2004)

Dogs , Knowledge

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