Authority (Southern Reach #2)

by Jeff VanderMeer

Sometimes this happens while he is awake, as if he hasn’t been paying enough attention, and then he silently recites his own name until the real world returns to him.

He liked to burrow in, try to find a level where the details illuminated without overwhelming him.

You lose the need or impetus to divulge, to communicate, a bit like astronauts lose muscle mass.

These were the kinds of thoughts you had to both keep at bay and fuel, if you could manage that trick. You couldn’t become devoured by them, but you had to heed them.

All of the things that wore you down, even as that was balanced by the electric feeling of being on the side of a border where you knew things no one else knew.

If you quacked like a scientist and waddled like a scientist, soon, to nonscientists, you became the subject under discussion and not a person at all.

But he recognized his bottled-up laughter for the onset of hysteria, and his cynicism for what it was: a defense mechanism so he wouldn’t have to think about any of it.