The Postmortal Quotes

“You become a parent, and your whole life becomes about worrying. You just worry constantly whether they'll be okay. And the idea that I'll be worried forever about them and what they do...I almost have a panic attack when I think about it. I'm worried, and I'm worried about having to worry so goddamn much.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“Death is the only thing keeping us in line.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“I once met a traveler who told me he would live to see the end of time. He laid out all his vitamins before me and told me he slept seven hours every night, no more or less. All the life you want, he said. It's all within the palm of your hand now. He said he would outlast all the wars and all the diseases, long enough to remember everything, and long enough to forget everything. He'd be the last man still standing when the sun decides to collapse upon itself and history ends. He said he had found the safest place on earth, where he could stay until the gateway to the beyond opened before him. A thousand generations from today. I pictured him there, atop a remote and snowy mountain. The heavens opening and God congratulating him for his perseverance. Asking him to join Him and watch as the sun burns down to a dull orange cinder and everything around it breaks is orbit and goes tumbling tumbling away, everything that once seemed permanent pulled apart so effortlessly, like a ball of yarn. A life into divinity.
But I knew it was a lie. I've always known it was a lie. You can not hide from the world. It will find you. It always does. And now it has found me. My split second of immortality is over. All that's left now is the end, which is all any of us ever has.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“I know there's no heaven. I know it all turns to nothingness. But I fear there will be some remnant of me left within that void. Left conscious by some random fluke. Something that will scream out for this. That one speck of my soul will still exist and be left trapped and wanting. For you. For the light. For anything.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“You cannot hide from the world. It will find you. It always does. And now it has found me. My split second of immortality is over. All that's left now is the end, which is all any of us ever has.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“But everything's always been fucked up. Since the dawn of time. That's why people find each other. For comfort. For shelter. They find their own little crevice in the world, shielded from all the horror.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“You're better off believing in God they'd warn you, just in case. Because you'd hate to arrive at the gates of heaven a nonbeliever and find out the Christians had been right all along. It was a pretty ingenious line of thinking. It almost made me want to go to church. Not enough to actually go, but still.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“Sometimes I think the fact that she died is the reason I'll never stop loving her. She wasn't around long enough for me to grow tired of her personality or her appearance. Every relationship seems to lead to that end. She said it herself. She left me just as my mind had perfected her. The prime condition of love...Sometimes I wonder if that's a good thing. I despise myself for thinking that.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“Okay," I confessed. "You got me. I don't want to die. I'm terrified of death. I fear there's nothing beyond it and that this existence is the only one I'll ever possess. That's why I'm here."
He patted my leg to give me reassurance. "That's why they're all here. Even the ones that believe in heaven and seventy-two virgins and every other good thing supposedly waiting for them in the afterlife.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“I saw her dying on the screen, and I had to fight the urge to turn it off, because it was just so easy to do that and not deal with it--to let her be some distant problem I didn't have to acknowledge.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“We now live in a world where I think many people walk around asking themselves , do other people matter? Does the rest of the world mean anything to me? Or is all that matters this very small world of friends and family and colleagues that I've constructed for myself?”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“This is the Supernova," he said. "Any time he gets worked up, his body bursts into white-hot light that disintegrates anything around him. That's how I felt when I was growing up. Everything I had inside of me, I just wanted to turn loose. Felt like my heart had a nuclear reactor melting down inside of it. That's how you feel when you're young and you want everything.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“I asked XMN if perhaps this is not the best way to spend one's time. I asked if it might be a symptom of a much deeper personal problem that he has failed to address. He thinks for a moment. "Yeah I'm sure that's part of it. Then again, I don't know if the problems I have can ever be fixed. I don't know how you go about being reborn into a family that loves you. I think I'm damaged permanently. And if that's the case, everyone else deserves the same fate.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“Anchor yourself to one spot, my friend, and you’ll eventually grow contemptuous of it.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“I enjoy his company because he never answers any question with the phrase “I don’t know.” He either knows or he’ll talk out his ass until he’s convinced you he knows. It’s a skill I’ve yet to master.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“When you’ve served in the army for as long as I have, it becomes clear that you are not really serving your country, but that you are serving the very small group of men who control that country. You serve at their pleasure.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“So, really, is there much difference between curiosity and vanity?”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“I know there's no heaven. I know it all turns to nothingness. But I fear there will be some remnant of me left within that void. Left conscious by some random fluke. Something that will scream out for this. That one speck of my soul will still exist and be left trapped and wanting. For you. For the light. For anything”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“Their lives had ended so long ago, they felt like they belonged to another dimension. Sometimes, if I concentrated hard enough, I could remember them perfectly. I could bring their faces and bodies into focus. I could conjure them and spend time with them. Other times, they felt more like vague, wonderful ideas that I couldn’t quite fully form.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“We have known, long before this cure was discovered, that we have been consuming resources at an unsustainable pace- a pace that will now quicken at an unimaginable rate. We are a nation of strong, hardworking people. But it is, I'm afraid, part of human nature that we adapt only when forced to. We are told that there is only so much crude oil left in the earth. Yet we can still buy gas at the station on the corner, and for a relatively decent price. We haven't changed our ways, because we don't feel we have to. (p.67)”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“Because that’s what people do, Solara. They go along in life and they figure out who’s worth giving a shit about and who they can let fall by the wayside. And all they can do after that is hope against all hope that they cast their lot with the right kind. And that they didn’t let slip away someone they desperately should’ve held onto. So I pick you. It’s a gut instinct and nothing more.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“Being stuck awake in the middle of the night feels like prison. There’s nothing to do with yourself, especially when someone else is in the room. I”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“We talked, and I ate, and for the first time, Katy’s death moved to the back of my consciousness, if only for a moment. This is bereavement: the slow, eventual reassertion of your own meaningless preoccupations. As”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“My run up the avenue was complicated by the fact that everyone was staring at their damn phones and tablets, and not at the road ahead of them.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal