Phase Six Quotes

“We do not see our hand in what happens, and so we call certain events melancholy accidents… —Stanley Cavell”
― Jim Shepard, Phase Six

“The billions of texts, tweets, photos, videos, and other postings tsunami-ing in all directions in response to the general panic featured some helpful information, the way in negotiating a nearly impenetrable rain forest you might every so often come across an edible piece of fruit. The good news was that the internet democratized and facilitated the sharing of information, and that was the bad news, as well....On the one hand, useful information might have been pouring in from everywhere; on the other, you had to stir through the stew of journalism and entertainment and horseshit and noise to find it. And anything was probably more comforting than the official story, which seemed perpetually to be 'We're working on it,' and with so many more appealing options out there reality was being abandoned the way you might walk away from farmland that had lost its water source.”
― Jim Shepard, Phase Six

“In the U.S., whichever party was in power wasn't interested in support for public health. Public health never competed well for resources in either the House or the Senate. Countries were like people: they didn't value health until they lost it. And then once they got it back, they returned to their old complacency.”
― Jim Shepard, Phase Six

“I had this real hardass for a tutorial in grad school,' Jeannine finally said. 'And this one time when I told him that maybe my project hadn't panned out because it had been too ambitious, he said that he'd always thought that the moral of the Icarus story was not 'Don't try to fly too high.' He said he thought it was 'Do a better job on the wings.”
― Jim Shepard, Phase Six

“Her [Valerie Landry's] mentor in med school had reminded her more than once that doctors got even less time than families had to deal with patients dying. Someone died and the relatives went off by themselves and collapsed, but you still had the rest of your shift to get through.”
― Jim Shepard, Phase Six

“loneliness as solitude with self-pity thrown in.”
― Jim Shepard, Phase Six

“It took a month after the breakup for her to realize that she was refusing to go anywhere that didn't have cell service on the off chance he'd call, and after that revelation she [Jeannine Dziri] found herself wondering if you were wrong to believe that you went on as yourself even after the loss of that person who had so decisively shaped you.”
― Jim Shepard, Phase Six