My Work is Not Yet Done Quotes

“I wanted to do things to Richard that would make the sun grow cold with horror.”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror

“The company that employed me strived only to serve up the cheapest fare that the customer would tolerate, churn it out as fast as possible, and charge as much as they could get away with. If it were possible to do so, the company would sell what all businesses of its kind dream about selling, creating that which all of our efforts were tacitly supposed to achieve: the ultimate product -- Nothing. And for this product they would command the ultimate price -- Everything.”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror

“I cannot wait to be dead. I cannot wait.”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror

“The company that employed me strived only to serve up the cheapest fare that its customers would tolerate, churn it out as fast as possible, and charge as much as they could get away with. If it were possible to do so, the company would sell what all businesses of its kind dream about selling, creating that which all our efforts were tacitly supposed to achieve: the ultimate product – Nothing. And for this product they would command the ultimate price – Everything. This market strategy would then go on until one day, among the world-wide ruins of derelict factories and warehouses and office buildings, there stood only a single, shining, windowless structure with no entrance and no exit. Inside would be – will be – only a dense network of computers calculating profits. Outside will be tribes of savage vagrants with no comprehension of the nature or purpose of the shining, windowless structure. Perhaps they will worship it as a god. Perhaps they will try to destroy it, their primitive armory proving wholly ineffectual against the smooth and impervious walls of the structure, upon which not even a scratch can be inflicted.”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror

“Every milestone in the history of the company, even when forecast with heaps of hoopla, was ultimately played out according to some secret timeline of geologic tedium, so that it was drained of all interest and drama well before it took place and afterward went all but unnoticed.”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror

“Generally speaking: Expect nothing but nightmarish obscenities to be born when human heads come together in intercourse.”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror

“What was that all about!’ (In this sense the world of the company mirrored the world itself, which sometimes managed to stage a rousing first act, and perhaps even provide a few engaging scenes of a second before devolving into a playwright’s nightmare, wherein the actors either butchered their lines or entirely forgot them, scenery collapsed, props misfired, and most of the audience left the theater during intermission.)”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done

“One by one all the regular staff stopped appearing for work, and their desks came to be occupied by new persons who always looked like fugitives from the great tribe of derelicts living in the Golden City, a shadow population that moved day and night through that yellowish haze.[...] Of course this manner of fiscal growth could not continue much longer and other measures would need to be taken if the company was truly to become a dominant force in the marketplace of this world or any other.”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror

“It all seemed so enticing, but like every other attraction along the world’s midway the greatest part of its appeal lay in those moments of anticipation. And after it was all over, the particular attraction which had once promised so much would send you on your way unrewarded, purged of your curiosity and the poorer for being so.”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror

“I declared earlier in this document that, 'with one exception,' there was no cuteness among The Seven. Sherry was the exception, although a serious qualification must be appended to this statement. Physically she was attractive, not to the point of being a harrowing beauty, but enough to put her over the line between women of average or even 'good' looks into the company of those who possessed across-the-room attraction. (If anyone believes that I'm perpetuating some arbitrary or twisted image of the world, that's fine with me - I wish them well in their transactions with social reality.) The qualification to which I made reference above is this: if you happened to cross that room on the other side of which stood Sherry, what you confronted was...I can't even name it - some kind of thing inhabiting the body of an attractive woman, an alien from some diseased planet or a creature of low evolutionary stature that by some curious means had insinuated itself into a human being at some stage in her development, the result being this Sherry-thing.”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror

“Fear, when blended with failure, distills into a deadly brew.”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror

“Memo from the CEO As the forces operating in today’s marketplace become more shadowy and incomprehensible we must recommit ourselves every second of every day to a ceaseless striving for that elusive dream which we all share and which none of us can remember, if it ever existed in the first place. And if anyone thinks that, as all the world races toward the same elusive dream, our competition isn’t fully prepared to gnaw off its own genitals to get to the promised land before us and keep it for themselves … think again.”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror

“A multinational corporation is dreaming. We are an organization of more than 100 thousand souls (full time) and are presently seeking individuals willing to trade their personal lot for a share in our dream. Entry level positions are now available for self-possessed persons who can see beyond the bottom line to a bottomless realm of possibilities. Our enterprise is now thriving in a tough, global marketplace and has taken on a life all its own. If you are a committed, focused individual with a hunger to be part of something far greater than yourself … our door is now open. Your life need not be a nightmare of failure and resentment. Join us. Outstanding benefits.”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror

“I—and you—now understood: We were brought into this world out of nothing.
I—and you—now understood: We were kept alive in some form, any form, as long as we were viciously thrashing about, acting out our most intensely vital impulses, never allowed to become still and silent until every drop had been drained of the blackness flowing inside us.
I—and you—now understood: We would be pulled back into the flowing blackness only when we had done all the damage we were allowed to do, only when our work was done. The work of you against me…and me against you.”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror

“That was not how we did things where I happened to work. The company that employed me strived only to serve up the cheapest fare that its customers would tolerate, churn it out as fast as possible, and charge as much as they could get away with. If it were possible to do so, the company would sell what all businesses of its kind dream about selling, creating that which all our efforts were tacitly supposed to achieve: the ultimate product – Nothing. And for this product they would command the ultimate price – Everything.”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done

“might just as well ask how you knew how to do the things you did.”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done

“Subsequently there ensues an epoch of complex, proliferating intrigues and conspiracies among the ranks of double agents, whose agendas become so densely intertwined that they are virtually indistinguishable. Ever the Governing Executives of OneiriCon, many of whom are defectors from the Nightmare Network, throw themselves into the depths of the new order and lose all sense of identity in the ever-expanding nebula of blind ambition, which possesses a power and impetus that belongs entirely to itself.”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror

“But what could I say to her? That I’m drawn to those old buildings and junk because (voice beginning to seethe) . . . because they take me into a world (the seething builds) . . . a world that is the exact opposite of the one (voice seething to a pitch) . . . the one I’m doomed by my own weakness and fear to live in (uncontrollable, meta-maniacal seething) . . . to live in during my weeks, my months, my years and years of work . . . work . . . work?”
― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror