Palerunner Quotes

“Violence and beauty are intrinsically linked. It’s people, regular humans making choices in systems, in unknowing collaboration with time, that change the world. Not spirits of the forest or an all seeing god or saints or fairy stories, just regular folk. Pentiment seems to ask, again and again, why isn't this enough? The beautiful, natural world and the people within it. Why diminish us with cheap myths and gods when we are all here. Why can't we be enough. Regular folk loving and hating and bickering and caring and trying. Always trying. Which is all any of us can do. Try to live. Try to live well.”
― D.C. McNeill, Palerunner: A collection of essays about world building, CRPG’s, love, loss and many other kinds of literary vulnerability

“Above all, we share the silence. The moment in the small hours once
the woman in the hoodie has hung up the phone and gone inside. The
minutes after the couple a few blocks over retire, their argument stowed,
mistaking accord for reconciliation. When the record reaches its end, and
Mister Withers spins down - may he never be forgotten. When all the cars
are safe in their homes and all the people are safe in their ports.”
― D.C. McNeill, Palerunner: A collection of essays about world building, CRPG’s, love, loss and many other kinds of literary vulnerability

“You don’t have to save the world to make a difference,
sometimes you just have to get up in the morning and put one foot in front
of the other. And accept that things are not the way you want. You can’t
undo the end of the world. You can’t magic yourself to a different city. You
can’t fix things with grand gestures. But you can wake up and move the dial
a little each day. That’s all any of us can do: put the weight on our shoulders,
secure the package, and get going.”
― D.C. McNeill, Palerunner: A collection of essays about world building, CRPG’s, love, loss and many other kinds of literary vulnerability

“And that’s courage for the next time. And the next time. And inch by
inch, you drag yourself back. Mend the knife-marks until they’re silver scars.
Mop the floors until the tiles are not longer stained, and you do that once
a fortnight now, because their shitty off-whiteness that collects far too
much dirt and dust won’t beat you. You fix the small bits, one at a time.
When you look back, you see the trail of black, oozing sick that you’ve
tracked from the pit, all the way to here. It’s been a long, brutal journey.
And yet, looking around, you’re shoulder to shoulder with your people,
who have the same tools and same luck as you. You beat the odds, inch by
inch. You haven’t won, not really, there’s no such thing, but you’re alive.
You get to keep going.”
― D.C. McNeill, Palerunner: A collection of essays about world building, CRPG’s, love, loss and many other kinds of literary vulnerability