Mount Silenus Quotes

“She’s laughing. Do you hear that?” “We’re poised to capture the greatest beast since the T. rex and you’re intimidated by a maid.” “Está usted ocupado?” “Dammit. Hide this stuff before she cleans. She’ll think we’re in the middle of some mega gayfest.” “Well we’re not.” “But that’s the kind of shit biographers write about,” says Gilbert. “They’ll talk to everyone who saw us before we went up.” “History is going to be very kind to us. I can feel it.”
― Petronius Jablonski, Mount Silenus: A Vertical Odyssey of Extraordinary Peril

“A great book you don’t read is a friend you’ll never meet.”
― Petronius Jablonski, Mount Silenus: A Vertical Odyssey of Extraordinary Peril

“The door opens a crack, sucking Time from the room like air from a ruptured plane. “Hello? It’s maid.” In an instant she will know eternity heretofore was all about her, though you’ve gone to modest lengths to create another interpretation. The mist of equivocality can be a blessing as well as a nuisance. She enters, her mustache full and dark, her pockmarks cavernous, her body squat and gnarled like some tree stump struck by lightning. The hideous troll cackles and says, “I come back,” and shuts the door. The”
― Petronius Jablonski, Mount Silenus: A Vertical Odyssey of Extraordinary Peril

“The Abominable Unau, thirty feet tall it lurches toward you, sickle claws protruding from furry stumps, long front legs stretching like the arms of a witch reaching across a table to read a palm. Through veils of snow appears a nose with the contours and padding of a leather recliner, infringing on space that should have been reserved for its tiny eyes.

Allegedly erased from the ledger of life, presumed to have plunged into that mass grave awaiting us all, it stands triumphant, in absolute defiance of Time and Nature and all man’s theories and measurements, which measure nothing at all, not even man. The wind howls in disbelief at this zombie returned from the dead. It throws back its head and makes a deep gurgling noise that sends tremors across the ground.

In lieu of girding your loins, you wet them. It stoops until its nose is inches from your face. The breeze from its inhalation sucks your hair straight up. How do you appear to it, as the pinnacle of creation, the raison d’être of existence, the summon bonum of Being, a member of the almighty species who spread its fungal growth to the moon, erecting temples to vanity in the dark heavens? Does it know man hath dominion over it, or does it see a bug too big to eat in one bite?”
― Petronius Jablonski, Mount Silenus: A Vertical Odyssey of Extraordinary Peril

“Did you know the bear is one of the most spiritual animals on earth,” says a man beside them. His vaguely English words struggle to emerge through an eastern European shell. “This is due to the omega-3 fatty acids they consume.” “My mom takes those pills,” says Gaspar. “She’s always praying.”
― Petronius Jablonski, Mount Silenus: A Vertical Odyssey of Extraordinary Peril

“Men go to absurd lengths explaining the problem of evil. In the process they sound like half-wit attorneys defending a mass-murderer. They say happenstance is a robber, free will a mixed blessing, joy more abundant than pain. Look deeper. There is a mighty force opposing our every plan, a cruel gravity smothering us, the heel of a boot grinding out the embers of our souls, a sadist cloaked in the dark fabric of existence. It is the implacable colossus of Fate. We scarcely have time to stumble onto the battlefield, much less comprehend our plight and mount a counterattack. In a few twinklings of the sun, on a day no different than all that came before, the cosmic ogre squashes us. Those convulsive growls that rend the sky, they are not thunder. They are laughter.” He”
― Petronius Jablonski, Mount Silenus: A Vertical Odyssey of Extraordinary Peril

“How could waiting to die be the lesser evil?”
― Petronius Jablonski, Mount Silenus: A Vertical Odyssey of Extraordinary Peril