Quotes from book
Generation Loss

Generation Loss

Generation Loss is a novel by American writer Elizabeth Hand.


Elizabeth Hand photo
Elizabeth Hand photo

“It sounds creepy, but I always liked the idea of disappearing then becoming something new.”

Source: Generation Loss (2007), Ch. 1
Context: It sounds creepy, but I always liked the idea of disappearing then becoming something new. That of course was before I disappeared.

Elizabeth Hand photo

“There's always a moment when everything changes.”

Source: Generation Loss (2007), Ch. 1
Context: There's always a moment when everything changes. … If you don't see it coming, if you blink or you're drunk or just looking the other way — well everything changes anyway, it's not like things would have been different.
But for the rest of your life you're fucked, because you blew it. Maybe no one else knows it, but you do. In my case, it was no secret. Everyone knew I'd blown it. Some people can make do in a situation like that. Me, I've never been good at making do. My life, who could pretend there wasn't a big fucking hole in it.

Elizabeth Hand photo

“I never mentioned it to anyone. No one else ever spoke of seeing it.”

Generation Loss (2007)
Context: I liked being alone. Once when I was fourteen, walking in the woods, I stepped from the trees into a field where the long grasses had been flattened by sleeping deer. I looked up into the sky and saw a mirror image of the grass, black and yellow-gray whorls making a slow clockwise rotation like a hurricane. As I stared the whorl began to move more quickly, drawing a darkness into its center until it resembled a vast striated eye that was all pupil, contracting upon itself yet never disappearing. I stared at it until a low buzzing began to sound in my ears. Then I ran.
I didn't stop until I reached my driveway. When I finally halted and looked back, the eye was still there, turning. I never mentioned it to anyone. No one else ever spoke of seeing it.

Ch. 1

Elizabeth Hand photo

“I had from earliest childhood a sense that there was no skin between me and the world. I saw things other people didn't see.”

Source: Generation Loss (2007), Ch. 1
Context: I had from earliest childhood a sense that there was no skin between me and the world. I saw things other people didn't see. Hands that slipped through the gaps in the air like falling leaves; a jagged outline like a branch but there was no branch and no tree. In bed at night I heard a voice repeating my name in a soft, insistent monotone. Cass. Cass. Cass. My father took me to a doctor, who said I'd grow out of it. I never did, really.

Elizabeth Hand photo

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