Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)

by Jeff VanderMeer

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.

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.

“Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that…

There are certain kinds of deaths that one should not be expected to relive, certain kinds of connections so deep that when they are broken you feel the snap of the link inside you.

The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what was a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?

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

“How do you feel about being part of a team?” “Just fine. I’ve often been part of teams.” And by “part of,” I mean off to the side.

There shall be a fire that knows your name, and in the presence of the strangling fruit, its dark flame shall acquire every part of you.

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

That which dies shall still know life in death for all that decays is not forgotten and reanimated shall walk the world in a bliss of not-knowing

“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.”