City of Saints and Madmen Quotes

“Ten years ago, we would have been writing perfect stories, but people's attention spans have become more limited in these, the last days of literacy.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen

“RATS. In sewers. In religions. In words like pirate, desperate, and narrative. Rats infest this glossary as surely as words and mushrooms.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen

“Perhaps [he had] persevered for too long, in the face of too many obstacles, his hair proof of his tenacity - the stark black streaked with white or, in certain light, stark white shot through with black, each strand of white attributable to the jungle fever (so cold it burned, his skin glacial), each strand of black a testament to being alive afterwards.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen

“If people were not by nature insane and resistant to self-improvement or therapy,”
― Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen

“Take two pictures representing the same subject; one may be dismissed as illustration if it is dominated by the subject and has no other justification but the subject, the other may be called painting if the subject is completely absorbed in the style, which is its own justification, whatever the subject, and has an intrinsic value.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen

“The impatient, feckless reader, posessed of no glimmer of intellectual or historical curiosity, should do an old historian a favor and skip the next few pages, proceeding directly to the Silence itself (Part III). I would assume that, in these horrid modern times, that will include most of you. Of course, those readers least likely to read these footnotes, and thus least likely to appreciate the next few pages, will skip this note and bore themselves upon the ennui of history .”
― Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen

“No doubt the detour to deliver Lake had made the sheep late for an appointment.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen

“I spend my day off contemplating my palm with my girlfriend Emily Brosewiser, she of the aforementioned blond hair, the succulent lips, the tactile smile, the moist charm. (My comparisons become so fecund I think I would rather love a fruit or a vegetable.)”
― Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen

“He hugs her and mumbles like a sailor in love with the sea, drowning without protest as the water takes him deeper; until her lungs are awash and he has caught her in his endless dream of drowning.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen

“If the man could only see his way to the center of a single memory and hold it in his mind, he might understand what has happened to him. Instead, from the edge of his attention, the absence of mother, father, wife, daughter, leaves only outlines. It is too much to bear. It must be borne... In some cases, recognition may take the form of violent acts—one last convulsion against the inevitable. But not in the man's case. In him, the sorrow only deepens, for he has begun to suspect the truth. The man wanders through gardens and courtyard, through tree-lined neighborhoods and along city-tamed streams, all touched equally by the blank expanse of night. He is without thought except to avoid thought, without purpose except to avoid purpose.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen

“When Dradin stopped running he found himself on the fringe of the religious quarter, next to an emaciated macadamia salesman who cracked jokes like nuts.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen