Dead in Long Beach, California Quotes

“Tomorrow we belong to the unnamable thing, which requires only that we try. What quakes and burns in the cosmos will always roar with or without warning. We must bear the sound.”
― Venita Blackburn, Dead in Long Beach, California: A Novel

“at one point on this earth you were warm and held for however long and that all by itself was good enough.”
― Venita Blackburn, Dead in Long Beach, California: A Novel

“All humans would eventually try anything to feel more than nothing.”
― Venita Blackburn, Dead in Long Beach, California: A Novel

“What quakes and burns in the cosmos will always roar with or without warning. We must bear the sound.”
― Venita Blackburn, Dead in Long Beach, California: A Novel

“That is how happiness works; it is faith and forgetting that there is so much else to worry about.”
― Venita Blackburn, Dead in Long Beach, California: A Novel

“They stopped thinking in the same reality and retreated to separate ones, losing consciousness and dreaming in lies, like accidentally destroying your own nation with a biological weapon meant for a neighbor, an easy mistake.”
― Venita Blackburn, Dead in Long Beach, California: A Novel

“In the Clinic for Excavating Repressed Memories in Search of Solutions to Current Crises, we are children, promised love and toys in exchange for the unbearable weight of growing up.”
― Venita Blackburn, Dead in Long Beach, California: A Novel

“With the concept of Later came the perversion of More. Early humankind clearly had a keen sense of More. They always wanted More: more food, more water, more sex, more reasons to war for food, water and sex. It wasn't complicated, but once Later entered their consciousness, the limits of More widened to hazardous extremes. Later had to be filled with More and Later, an abstract concept with no concrete parameters and that possessed a special range to hold endless junk and garbage or essential items that would eventually wither into junk and garbage. The perversion of More did not simply end with decay but also eroded the simple act of sharing. With limitless space in the future, there was little room left i the present to gauge how much was too much to keep for Later and to spare for others. And so humanity began to hoard.”
― Venita Blackburn, Dead in Long Beach, California

“Coral couldn’t decide if this was everything she’d ever wanted or a sad mistake. We often call that feeling grace. However, it could’ve just been satisfaction, regret, or the early stages of appendicitis.”
― Venita Blackburn, Dead in Long Beach, California: A Novel

“than one thing very well at any given time. Multitasking was a myth and exists as a footnote in the standard text issued upon entry to those enrolled in the Clinic for Telling Lies to Avoid Pending Death.”
― Venita Blackburn, Dead in Long Beach, California: A Novel

“The unique relationship to water among the living was incomparable to any other. It was more than sex, murder, food, or faith. It was their god and their whore.”
― Venita Blackburn, Dead in Long Beach, California: A Novel