Veniss Underground Quotes

“He stumbled, almost fell, and decided to sit down, with his back against the tunnel wall, his feet resting against the opposite wall. Roaring out of the morass of pity, terror, happiness, joy, sadness, elation that he had inherited - shooting forth from this void, the single sharp thought: She does not love me. It was almost more than he could take. But he was not the kind of person to fold, to crack, to be broken, and so instead, in those moments after the realization, he bent - and bent, and kept on bending beneath the pressure of this new and terrible knowledge. Soon he would bend into a totally new shape altogether. He welcomed that. He wanted that. Maybe the new thing he would become would no longer hurt, would no longer fear, would no longer look back down into the void and wonder what was left of him.

She did not love him. It made him laugh as he sat there -- great belly laughs that doubled him over in the dust, where he lay for a long moment, recovering. It was funny beyond bearing. He had fought through a dozen terrors all for love of her. And she did not love him. He felt like a character in a holovid - the jester, the clown, the fool.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Veniss Underground

“Let me tell you what happens when you burn a person's body, pull out all of his teeth, glue his head to a plate, and shove a bomb in his ear. You become that person's object of undying hatred.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Veniss Underground

“That is why the human race is dying—too limited an imagination. No thought for the consequences.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Veniss Underground: A Novel

“The scrawled letters form words, the words form lines, the lines form a poem. Your eyes scanning across the page give the poem life.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Veniss Underground: A Novel

“Another week passes into grey oblivion. You're a slow dream, an autumn freeze, a ship on the doldrums. Thoughts come slow and ponderous, like deep sea fish floating heavy and memory-bound to the surface; coelacanth reborn.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Veniss Underground

“Once, we were close and close-knit, but now we are unmoored islands, each alone, each a separate planet, drifting farther and farther away, content to turn ever inward... This is no idle solipsism; it has taken on the fragile brightness of truth. Cities turned from cities, self-devouring. Governments fragmenting into fragments of fragments. Entertainment become a solitary diversion. Solo adventures.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Veniss Underground

“There must be something you want from me. Not that I am ungrateful for the surprise.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Veniss Underground

“Let me tell you what happens when you burn a person’s body, pull out all of his teeth, glue his head to a plate, and shove a bomb in his ear. You become that person’s object of undying hatred.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Veniss Underground

“A mother with child screamed at him and he pulled out John the Baptist, who screamed back until she was screaming for an entirely different reason.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Veniss Underground

“Once, we were close and close-knit, but now we are unmoored islands, each alone, each a separate planet, drifting farther and farther away, content to turn ever inward . . . This is no idle solipsism; it has taken on the fragile brightness of truth. Cities turned from cities, self-devouring. Governments fragmenting into fragments of fragments. Entertainment become a solitary diversion. Solo adventures.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Veniss Underground

“What does it mean to enter the mind of the beloved? The I lost in the you without hesitation: the ultimate goal of every kindred soul to transcend the aching, the screaming, loneliness of the Divide, so that the atoms of one dissolve into the atoms of the other (two as one . . .), making such intimate love that orgasm is the sharing of electrons in flight. And what does it mean to enter the mind of the beloved when you believe the beloved no longer loves you?”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Veniss Underground: A Novel