The Deep Quotes

“The water wasn't the same down here.

Water is what runs out of the kitchen taps or a playground drinking fountain. It fills bathubs and pools and yes, of course, the ocean- but at a certain depth, water becomes a barrier from all you remember, all you think you know.

You're trapped within it, a plaything of it.

Focus erodes. Your thoughts mutate. The pressure.

The pressure.

The soul can't cope with that. It shouldn't be expected to.

Humans weren't built for this. There's a reason nothing lives down here.

Or nothing should.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“Your child doesn’t owe you loyalty or obedience. You owe your child love and understanding, owe it unconditionally, and if you love them strongly enough, eventually that love may be returned.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“Prepare the lifeboats, mates! The SS Sanity is capsizing! We're going down!”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“He began to cry then, clutching LB. The tears came easily. He had not cried tears of such distilled regret since his son had gone missing. LB was going limp, either spent, tired of fighting, or resigned to her fate. Luke hugged her so, so tight. He wanted LB to remember his touch. The warmth and love that radiated from his whole body, coupled with the sadness that she was being ripped away from him. He wanted her to take that one physical memory with her wherever she was going. The imprint of his hands on her. He wished it to be a reminder that she was a good creature, and loved, and that there were places on the continuum where love and kindness still existed, even if she did not share that world presently. She did not deserve this. But things happened. They happened.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“Good men die in wretched agony and bad men die happily in their beds. Creatures live and die never knowing love.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“Well, time works differently down here, boss. Sometimes I feel like I've lived a thousand lifetimes ... it's funny. The pain is constant. Sometimes it's so much that I can't stand it. I bite at myself, tear my skin off, but I can never quite die. Like I said, funny. But to hurt is to love, right?”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“Memories degrade. You remember parts of people, but you surrender their wholes.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“Maybe it was for the best. He could just go gibberingly, shit-smearingly insane.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“The detritus of animal and plant life that had died miles above. It fell steadily through each zone of the ocean, down and down, shredding into flakes, leached of pigment until it became bone white. A snow of death.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“If this was the apocalypse, it was to be an orderly and complacent one.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“His final surface sight was of a new moon hovering in its eastern orbit: a waxen ball whose light plated the slack darkness of the sea. Then they slipped under and were gone.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“They were slick with the kind of adrenal perspiration that squeezes from the pores like the sweat off foreign cheese.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“What are you so afraid of? said that same voice inside Luke’s head.
Everything, another voice answered.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“Light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second. And still, it takes a billion years to get here. That’s how big the universe is. It’s 99.99999999 percent darkness. And did you know that the stars we’re looking at right now could be dead already? Burned up, nothing but a black hole. We’re just seeing their ghosts. Ghosts that traveled a quintillion miles just to say Boo!”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“it’s like leaving the Hope Diamond in a bus station locker: as long as nobody really understands its value, it’s perfectly safe where it is.” Felz”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“The dream drained from his brainpan, thick as syrup.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“This out-of-body feeling that you’ve stepped away from the path your species has always tread. Things become dreamlike, essential, Your mind, seeking solace in the familiar, retreats to those things you understand, but those things become so much harder to grasp.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“Luke hissed, a release of pent-up anger and fear, and gave it a kick, which only sent a spike of pain shooting up to his knee.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“unknown to him then.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“That’s how it went with the ’Gets: you forgot the little things first, then the not-so-little things, then the big ones. Next, the critical ones. In time, your heart forgot how to beat, your lungs how to breathe. You die knowing nothing at all.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“Hungry, hungry hole.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“It was so plainly obvious, wasn’t it? How had he missed it?”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“You fuck. You miserable fucking specimen of humanity.” Clayton’s expression suggested he took this as a compliment. It was perfectly acceptable to be a miserable representative of a species you cared nothing for.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“You’ve never seen the kind of dark we’re gonna encounter.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“to perform an autopsy on a police drug dog”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“Organisms are tough. They do not want to expire.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“People think it’s about winning and losing, sport, Luke told him, because he could tell his son was upset. About winning, mainly. But that’s not it. It’s about the trying. The not-giving-up. We’re all going to lose. So it’s about losing and going on, keep going on, even though you may lose again and again. You may never win, buddy, not at some things. So it’s about working as hard as you can, every day, to find your spot on the mountain. And then it’s about being okay with where you are so that you can get some enjoyment out of that, and out of the things in life that are more important than whatever place you end up on that silly old mountain, anyway.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“Luke’s fingers sunk into Zach’s eye sockets to the second knuckle. They punched into a pocket of curdled sludge that reminded him of the congealed porridge his mother used to eat. There came a hissing sound, but from where, Luke couldn’t tell. Stinking fluid the color of molten lead bubbled up from Zachary’s sockets.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“How’s it going, buddy?” Luke said, smiling. “How you doin’, Zach Attack?”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep

“The helicopter roved toward the creek; maybe Zach had fallen in, borne along in the current that flowed west toward Coralville.”
― Nick Cutter, The Deep