Sea of Tranquility

by Emily St. John Mandel

Isn’t that why we’re here? To leave a mark on wilderness?”

If there’s pleasure in action, there’s peace in stillness.

Everything offended Jessica, which is inevitable when you move through the world in search of offense.

Clothes are armor.

There’s a low-level, specific pain in having to accept that putting up with you requires a certain generosity of spirit in your loved ones.

What you have to understand is that bureaucracy is an organism, and the prime goal of every organism is self-protection. Bureaucracy exists to protect itself.”

“Someone suggested to me that it has to do with a secret longing for heroism, which I found interesting. Perhaps we believe on some level that if the world were to end and be remade, if some unthinkable catastrophe were to occur, then perhaps we might be remade too, perhaps into better, more heroic, more honorable people.”

“But all of this raises an interesting question,” Olive said. “What if it always is the end of the world?” She paused for effect. Before her, the holographic audience was almost perfectly still. “Because we might reasonably think of the end of the world,” Olive said, “as a continuous and never-ending process.”

I’ve been thinking a great deal about time and motion lately, about being a still point in the ceaseless rush.