The Light Pirate Quotes

“What is magic but science that is not yet understood? What is science but magic with an explanation?”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“They fought so hard to keep a world that was not meant to stay the same.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“Someone will be left behind; this is what love costs.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“These women haven't shared their genes, but they have given freely of their memories. Their ideas. Their skills. There is more than one kind of legacy.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“After all this time, the aches have grown softer but also deeper. They both know the looping shape of pain--it changes and quiets but never ends. There is a strange comfort in its constancy. Memories of what was lost are also reminders of what was held.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“This is survival. This is how the vessel protects the mind, how the mind protects the heart, how the heart goes on forgetting that its calling is to be undefended, that being broken is part of being whole.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“Nursing a dying creature isn’t always the kind thing to do.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“There is a necessary tension between knowing how nature works in theory and witnessing it.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“Humans have spoiled so much, but nature is resourceful. It dies and is reborn as something new.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“They both know the looping shape of pain—it changes and quiets but never ends. There is a strange comfort in its constancy. Memories of what was lost are also reminders of what was held.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“Even in its monotony, the ocean can't help but be mesmerizing.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“She understands that it isn’t enough to have made it home. It isn’t enough to be alive after all these years. There is a deficit here that she is unable to reconcile. Life costs more than it gives.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“And in the center of the clock, inside the now—choices gather, waiting to be made. The swamp is alive with information. Dangers and saviors. Lovers and predators. The lie is in the separation. The truth is always growing.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“If the ocean is a body, then the waves are its tongue, long and blue-gray, licking at the beach until there’s nothing left. This body is wide and full and deep. It rises, wrapping itself around the world, squeezing the land tight between its thighs. Ten years mean nothing to a body like this. It’s been here since the beginning.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“They've known for years. Decades. It didn't make any difference. None at all. Because now it's here and despite all that knowing, he's lost. Everyone is. They had all hung their hats on the question of proximity. Yes, it will be bad, they'd said to one another, but we have years. We have time. Somehow we'll solve this along the way. He doesn't even have the energy to be angry.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“Memories of what was lost are also reminders of what was held.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“She can’t bring herself to say the goodbye she feels coming out loud. They are so old now—maybe it doesn’t need to be said. Maybe it’s already woven into each moment they share. Someone will be left behind; this is what love costs.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“She became an enemy when he wasn’t even looking. Probably because he wasn’t even looking.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“She'd always been this way. Even as a child she'd reveled in being left alone. Her parents didn't understand her, and neither did her sister. Eventually they gave up on convincing her to join in, and let her be. She'd always been a satellite, orbiting out beyond the gravitational pull of family and community and togetherness. It was a peaceful way to exist”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“The light flows in every direction. It is composed of many minds, many eyes. It is one creature, and it is many. An awareness that grows and deepens. An intelligence that is made to join and join and join. This is how life began; this is how it goes on living.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“That’s how the world is divided now: the places that still function, and the places that don’t. Florida doesn’t. Their local governments are dissolving, their infrastructure crumbling. Louisiana is fading, too. The Outer Banks of North Carolina are gone entirely. The Bahamas. Indonesia. More will follow.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“The only thing surprising about any of this is that he’s alive to see it. That’s the real bet they all made, isn’t it? It will come. But not until we’re gone.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“These women haven’t shared their genes, but they have given freely of their memories. Their ideas. Their skills. There is more than one kind of legacy.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“The Government didn't even bother with relocation packages. It just abandoned over three million people to their ruined infrastructure, their crumbling homes, the ravenous ocean.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“Kirby would like to say something reassuring to his son. Even more, he would like to say something true. But the convergence of these qualities is rare when it comes to the future of certain parts of the world.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“He knows it’s his fault, but not seeing how to correct it, he goes on hoping it will be resolved without his intervention.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“She wishes for a code she might speak that would convey this sense of emergency, this unhinged feeling she has that if he doesn’t let her be frightened, doesn’t let her exist in this fear completely and without apology, if he doesn’t listen, she might never recover.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“sometimes humans need to see change, to literalize it, in order to know that it’s arrived,”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“seeking knowledge in one form or another, but the pursuit itself taught her infinitely more about the absence of knowledge than its presence. What is magic but science that is not yet understood? What is science but magic with an explanation?”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

“It soothed Wanda to imagine it all. Privately, Phyllis didn’t believe such things. Not that Lucas wasn’t capable, or special, or talented—she just didn’t believe that the world was salvageable. The last she’d heard was that things were disintegrating faster than ever. The more land that became uninhabitable, the more the crush of refugees overwhelmed kinder climates.”
― Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate