The Route of Ice and Salt Quotes

“Ice is for other beings, its rhythms and reasons beyond our ken, its starkness for alien eyes. The indifference of God, murmured by the world.”
― José Luis Zárate, The Route of Ice and Salt

“Before a blizzard, I should look upon the dark earth for what seemed the last time, before the punctillated pattern of white made it something else entirely. Such helplessness in seeing the warm, familiar, kindly autumn world swallowed bit by bit. On the deck of the Demeter, looking out upon the sea and the non-existent strigoi, I felt everything disappear under a snowfall that no one else perceived. Without yet knowing why, I was certain that, somehow, Winter had embarked with us.”
― José Luis Zárate, The Route of Ice and Salt

“Yet ... what if the last gift of light is the sight of something that belongs to naught but the night? What if death is more merciful than the appearance of whatever should come for our flesh?”
― José Luis Zárate, The Route of Ice and Salt

“What kind of monsters deserved such treatment, such rage and contempt? Vampires, yes, but also the bastard sons, the unbaptized ones, the inhabitants of other regions, the sodomites and those careless souls who allowed a black cat to jump over their dead bodies. In short: anyone. Anyone could be considered a monster. And monsters were assassinated with impunity. Didn’t you know? Didn’t we all know? The grownups who hushed themselves to protect the children; the children who, without knowing how, discovered they were not safe from the darkness and death?”
― José Luis Zárate, The Route of Ice and Salt

“But I must see that man for the last time, tell him that Hunger is not a sin, nor is Necessity or Appetite.
What matters, I repeat, is what we are willing to do to satisfy them.”
― José Luis Zárate, The Route of Ice and Salt

“To sleep is to abandon oneself to darkness.”
― José Luis Zárate, The Route of Ice and Salt

“Hunger is not a sin, nor is Necessity or Appetite. What matters, I repeat, is what we are willing to do to satisfy them.”
― José Luis Zárate, The Route of Ice and Salt

“The body was a beast for them, the flesh a monster that yielded to an incomprehensible instinct.”
― José Luis Zárate, The Route of Ice and Salt

“Le plaisir et la peur se ressemblent parfois tellement.”
― José Luis Zárate, La Glace et le Sel