Dark Matter Quotes

“How odd, that light should prevent one from seeing.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“Moving closer to the edge, I peered down. The water was glassy green, extraordinarily clear. I experienced the feeling I sometimes get when I'm on a bridge or a railway platform. Rationally, you know that you've no intention of stepping off the bridge or the platform - or this ice floe - but you're aware that you could, and that the only thing stopping you is your will.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“If you're warm enough when you set out, you're wearing too many clothes.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“If it can be described, it can be understood. If it can be understood, it need not be feared.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“Fear of the dark. Until I came here, I thought that was for children; that you grew out of it. But it never really goes away. It’s always there underneath. The oldest fear of all.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“And yet I think I now understand the impulse which drives men to shoot bears. It isn't for the pelt or the meat or the sport - or not only those things. I think they need to do it. They need to kill that great Arctic totem to give them some sense of control over the wilderness - even if that is only an illusion.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“I wondered what it must be like to be so handsome. Surely it would affect the behavior of everyone around you, always?”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“In one of my periodicals, there’s a paper by someone who’s worked out that what we know of the universe is only a tiny percentage of what actually exists. He says what’s left can’t be seen or detected, but it’s there; he calls it ‘dark matter’. Of course, no one believes him; but I find the idea unsettling. Or rather, not the idea itself, that’s merely an odd notion about outer space. What I don’t like is the feeling I sometimes get that other things might exist around us, of which we know nothing.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“Until that moment, I’ve never felt like prey. Never been so intensely watched by a creature who would kill me if it got the chance. I stared at it, and I felt death staring back.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“But young as I was, I suspected that a God who allows such cruelty wouldn’t have cared about bringing it to an end.
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“Fear of the dark. Until I came here, I thought that was for children; that you grew out of it. But it never really goes away. It’s always there underneath. The oldest fear of all. What’s at the back of the cave?”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. She was right, old Marie Curie.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“It stood. It faced me. Dark, dark against the sea. I saw its arms hanging at its sides. I saw that one shoulder was higher than the other. I saw its wet round head.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“When I was eight, I saw some older boys torture a dog. At first they only kicked it. Then one of them took out his penknife and slit its eyes. I remember watching it stagger down the street. I was desperate for its suffering to end; please please let it be run over. But the creature blundered across the road and round the corner, and when I got there it was gone. For weeks I prayed that it had died quickly. But young as I was, I suspected that a God who allows such cruelty wouldn’t have cared about bringing it to an end”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“for the first time in my life, I was aware of cold as a menace.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“I can understand why the Vikings believed in storm giants. I keep having to remind myself that there is no intention behind this. It feels so angry. As if it wants to tear apart the cabin and carry me off into the night.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“Never been so intensely watched by a creature who would kill me if it got the chance. I stared at it, and I felt death staring back. A”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“That makes me think of Mother. She was a great one for not talking about things. She always refused to discuss what was wrong with Father. She used to say, no, Jack, it’ll only make it real. That used to infuriate me. I’d say, but it is real. And she’d say, well, more real, then. And she was right.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“To be conscious in eternal night, you would pray for oblivion... But there would be no one around to hear you.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“My conscious mind accepts this. But the deeper part – the part which remembers the darkness of the caves – wonders if I might be wrong.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“I was no longer the frightened obsessive who’d cowered in the storm and fought an illusory battle with a log. I was Jack Miller, the man who’s keeping the 1937 Spitsbergen Expedition alive against all the odds.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“But the thing to remember, Jack, is that it’s only an echo. It’s like a footprint or a shadow. It can’t hurt you. All it can do is frighten.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“It’s real. I saw it. It isn’t alive.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“Fear of the dark. Until I came here, I thought that was for children; that you grew out of it. But it never really goes away. It’s always there underneath. The oldest fear of all. What’s at the back of the cave? Eriksson was right. One mustn’t think too much. Keep busy, walk every day, that’s what he said. I’ve got to follow that to the letter. Especially the walks.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“How odd, that light should prevent one from seeing”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“knew then it was hopeless. I couldn’t be part of their expedition. If I can’t put up with them for a couple of hours, how could I stand a whole year? I’d end up killing someone.”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“But young as I was, I suspected that a God who allows such cruelty wouldn’t have cared about bringing it to an end. I”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“I’m twenty-eight years old and I hate my life. I never have the time or the energy to work out how to change it. On Sundays I trail round a museum to keep warm, or lose myself in a library book, or fiddle with the wireless. But Monday’s already looming. And always I’ve got this panicky feeling inside, because I know I’m getting nowhere, just keeping myself alive. Tacked”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter