Land of the Beautiful Dead Quotes

“You were all my best days…and most of my worst ones, too, but that’s all right. The worst ones weren’t any worse than they might have been with anyone else, but the best ones were so much better. I love you.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Don’t make fun of me,” Lan snapped. “I’m illiterate, not stupid! I know there’s no B in subtle!”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Under no circumstances are you to butter your entire roll and, my God!” she cried suddenly, switching Lan’s hand three times in rapid succession. “Never lick your knife!” “Ouch! Fine! Buggering fuck! Leave off with that beshitted thing!” The dead woman let out a sound like the chirping of a bird, staring at her with an indignation that was nearly horror. “Ladies,” she sputtered at last. “Ladies do not say bugger or fuck!” “But beshitted’s all right?” Lan asked cautiously. “No, it is not!” “You know, I may not be as mannered-up as you are, but in Norwood, it’s rude to yell at the table.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“No, it is not. I give you a portion of my stolen wealth. You give me all you have.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Think, not of what you win or lose, but of what you learn and what you teach, and you will always have the advantage.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Men may perish, but the world will neither celebrate nor mourn. It will go on.' His smile thinned. 'Would you like to know how?'
'No.'
'Animals will swell to fill the void left by men," he told her. 'And over-swell it, perhaps. There will be other extinctions and other recoveries. The sky will clear, but those who see it will not marvel at its many colors. Those ruins will collapse, burying treasures like this-' He waved at the walls. '-and this-' He picked up the spoon from her coffee tray and tossed it down again with a clatter. '-forever, but the world will go on. Years become centuries so easily when no one is there to count them. Centuries become millennia. The forests will reclaim the lands that Men have razed. Rivers will carve canyons across the scars left by this fallen cities. Mountains will rise up, trapping seas to dry under and uncaring sun and leaving the bones of whales to bleach in the newborn deserts for no one to find, no one to be inspired by thoughts of giants and dragons. And still the worlds will go on, and I will go on with it through ages that can only be measured by the coming and going of glaciers. The stars themselves will shift in the heavens and no one will be there to invent names for their new alignments or remember the stories of the old ones, no one but me. In time, the sun itself will begin to cool. Here on Earth, the world goes on and on as its remaining life passes through its last changes and dies away. It will be quiet. And lonely.' His mouth curved into a bitter line. 'But I'll live.'
'Stop it,' Lan whispered through numb lips.
'I read once that the sun will someday swell and engulf this world before it burns itself out. Perhaps I will finally die with it. Or perhaps I' will continue to endure... my ashes pulled eternally apart through the frozen vacuum of space, and I with no more mouth to scream... still alive.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Damn you! Hear me now and hear me well. If you die, I will raze your Norwood. I will raze all of them--every village every waystation, every wall. I will make the whole of this world your grave. Do you hear me? How could you do this to me? How could you dare? Answer me!”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“The sky was full of fog, with the sun behind it turning it all to a single color—not quite white, but pale and promising, like a blank page where anything could be written. Anything at all.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“He told her not to speak or look at him. He told her not to try to kiss him. He told her she was beautiful. Then he lay her down and lay beside her and he said nothing more.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“A ‘library’ turned out to be a room where books were read. The fact that people used to have so many books that they needed a whole separate room just to store them, much less a word for the room, said everything Lan guessed she needed to know about the way the world used to be. In Norwood, loose pictures and salvaged magazines were locked up like other valuables. The mayor had a few books, including the town ledger where Lan’s own name had been written on the day of her birth and presumably crossed out along with her mother’s the day she’d left, but all of them together could have fit on one shelf. Here was a room the size of the dining hall, two stories tall and lined in bookshelves, with ladders on runners along every wall so that no shelf was out of reach. These were books that could not be measured in hundreds or even thousands, but in some greater number that had no name. If only she knew how to read.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“So tell me, oh unhappy human, what ir your suffering to mine?”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“There were no words, no capacity to form them, but there were thoughts swelling huge in her head and he was in every one of them, even deeper than he was in her body, because he didn't want to lose here.
He didn't want to lose her.
And maybe, that death-dark voice whispered to her aching heart, maybe he should.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“I had but one love and it is gone and now there is nothing and I tell you, that is the most awful feeling in the world.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“What do you think of me?”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Love means constantly saying you’re sorry, whether you mean it or not, whether you’re wrong or not. Love means trying to stop keeping score.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“You have to want the time you have.”
Azrael uttered a low, humorless laugh and said, “Why?”
Lan shrugged. “Because you have it, whether you want it or not. And
life is motion. That’s something else he used to say all the time. You can
move toward what you want or away from it, but you can’t stop, so you have
to want the time you have, because it’s all the time you get.”
“That loses its intended impact when ‘all the time you get’ is all the
time there is.”
“Master Wickham would say that only means you have a limitless
potential for change.”
“Would he indeed?”
“He’d say no one can live your life for you and no one else can waste
it. He’d say you carry the sole responsibility for your own success or failure.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“You are moving even as we speak, so you need to decide what it is you really want and how much you’re really willing to give up to achieve it, because everything you do and say, every decision that you make, can only bring you closer to your goal or further from it.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“One person against the world never wins.

And yet, you're here.

I'm not against the world, just you. Make the odds about even, as I see it.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“It was just boring, is all. I knew better than to think there was going to be booze after all this time, but still, only thing worse than being sober in a pub is being sober in ten of them.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Is that sex talk?" she asked uncertainly.
"It is."
"Why don't you just say sex then? It's always chalice and appetite and artifice with you. I never know what the hell you're saying.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“She looked up into the sky, watching sparks falling up and winking out. It was oddly like looking into a deep pond, seeing pebbles fall away into the dark water. Up and down, sky and water…life and death…all the same.

“It’s a nice night,” she said.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“One person against the world never wins."

"And yet, you're here."

"I'm not against the world, just you. Makes the odds about even, as I see it.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Forever. What do you know of forever?" He asked with undisguised contempt. "What do you know of death?”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“You’re alive, Lan,” he said. “You’re not ‘his’ anything.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“She took his hand instead and they walked to the door together. There, he suddenly swept Lan up off her feet and into his arms. He carried her over the threshold and out into the rain. The sky was full of fog, with the sun behind it turning it all to a single color—not quite white, but pale and promising, like a blank page where anything could be written. Anything at all.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Life doesn’t wait for you to be ready.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“The Earth may be Man’s home, but it didn’t have to love them for it, and in its unflinching eyes, humans were parasites, no different and no more deserving of life than any other worm feeding on a body from within.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Azrael rose and came over to the bed to help her sit up. The movement sent spears stabbing in through her eyes, but when the vertigo and internal pressure subsided, she did feel a bit clearer, enough to finally look down and notice she was entirely naked, apart from one slipper, which she was wearing on her hand. She held it up inquiringly. “I don’t know,” he told her, dumping out her cup into the fireplace so he could fill it with coffee again. “I tried to take it from you and you cried. You said it was your only friend.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Nobody mongers me, mate. I do my own whoring.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“You give me all this stuff…lessons and dresses and fancy dinners…and all I do is sleep with you. It isn’t fair.”
“No, it is not. I give you a portion of my stolen wealth. You give me all you have.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead