The Third Bear Quotes

“My Manager forced me to put my beetle in my own ear, a clear waste and an act that gave me nightmares: of a burning city through which giant carnivorous lizards prowled, eating survivors off of balconies. In one particularly vivid moment, I stood on a ledge as the jaws closed in, heat-swept, and tinged with the smell of rotting flesh. Beetles intended for the tough, tight minds of children should not be used by adults. We still remember a kinder, gentler world.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, The Third Bear

“If making a doppelganger using the priests’ emerald powder, the dulcimer should be played during the mixing; otherwise, your monster may coalesce with a vestigial tale or tail. It is also known that playing the dulcimer after dinner increases the chance of pleasant conversation, if accompanied by wine and a nice dessert.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, The Third Bear

“Ever since she had become my Manager, my raises had become smaller and smaller. The last raise had been a huge leech shaped like a helmet. It was meant to suck all the bad thoughts out of your head. It smelled like bacon, which seemed promising. I had invited Mord and Leer over to my apartment and we’d fried it up in a skillet. I’d gotten a week’s worth of sandwiches out of it.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, The Third Bear

“I am writing this sitting in the waterlogged lobby of a rotting, half-finished condominium complex. I am surrounded by cavorting freshwater seals and have two pearl-handled revolvers in my lap, a bottle of vodka in my right hand, a human body in the freezer in the kitchens behind me, and a rather large displaced rockhopper penguin staring me in the face.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, The Third Bear

“That is the tragedy of everyday life: when you are in it, you can never see your self clearly.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, The Third Bear

“He’s a man who measures words as if he had only a few given to him by Fate; too generous a syllable from his lips, and he might fall over dead.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, The Third Bear

“Hunt game? With pearl-handled revolvers?” I asked, incredulous. “Isn’t that a bit…I dunno…fancy? Do I just run out into the forest with my pearl-handled revolvers, or do I invite some deer to a cocktail party and then gun them down?”
― Jeff VanderMeer, The Third Bear

“And so all of these thoughts overwhelmed me when I woke from my hiding place in an alley the next morning, having slept on garbage and filth, to find it — wearing a large gray hat, small as a child but with the wizened features of something already dead — staring down at me.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, The Third Bear