Jeff VanderMeer

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

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

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

"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 …"

"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."

"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?"

"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 …"

"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."