Home > Work > Severance

Severance QUOTES

Severance QUOTES

1 " He dictates and enforces the rules, rules that only he fully knows and understands. He sees us as subjects, to reward or to punish. He complements you when he wants to control you. He doesn't see you. It doesn't mean he's not a person. It doesn't mean he's not vulnerable. In certain moments, he's just vulnerable enough that you feel sympathy for him. You make excuses for him, often to yourself. You think that if you just work with him a little, that eventually things will get better. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

2 " I have seen his face in its many variations. I have seen it when he's angry, when he's satisfied, when he tries to project control. I have been on his good side and his bad side. It is a face I have spent a lot of time trying to read, trying to appeal to, trying to capitulate to, trying to pretend for. I have always positioned myself in relation to him, thinking I could toe the line, thinking it would be fine if I just cooperated, thinking if only I compressed myself a little more. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

3 " Flying maggots, larvae maggots, maggoty maggots, maggoted maggots, dancing their maggot mating dance all over his maggoted face. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

4 " Leisure, the problem with the modern condition was the dearth of leisure. And finally, it took a force of nature to interrupt our routines. We just wanted to hit the reset button. We just wanted to feel flush with time to do things of no quantifiable value, our hopeful side pursuits like writing or drawing or something, something other than what we did for money. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

5 " If the masks actually work, don't you think maybe there wouldn't be an epidemic? "

― Ling Ma, , Severance

6 " If you’re lucky enough to find something you’re good at, where people appreciate you, don’t thumb your nose at it. If it’s an issue of salary or benefits, I’m open to discussing it. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

7 " To live in a city is to live the life that it was built for, to adapt to its schedule and rhythms, to move within the transit layout made for you during the morning and evening rush, winding through the crowds of fellow commuters. To live in a city is to consume its offerings. To eat at its restaurants. To drink at its bars. To shop at its stores. To pay its sales taxes. To give a dollar to its homeless. To live in a city is to take part in and to propagate its impossible systems. To wake up. To go to work in the morning. It is also to take pleasure in those systems because, otherwise, who could repeat the same routines, year in, year out? "

― Ling Ma , Severance

8 " A second chance doesn't mean you're in the clear. In many ways, it is the more difficult thing. Because a second chance means that you have to try harder. You must rise to the challenge without the blind optimism of ignorance. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

9 " The past is a black hole, cut into the present day like a wound, and if you come too close, you can get sucked in. You have to keep moving. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

10 " Memories beget memories. Shen fever being a disease of remembering, the fevered are trapped indefinitely in their memories. But what is the difference between the fevered and us? Because I remember too, I remember perfectly. My memories replay, unprompted, on repeat. And our days, like theirs, continue in an infinite loop. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

11 " The first place you live alone, away from your family, he said, is the first place you become a person, the first place you become yourself. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

12 " What I didn’t say was: I know you too well. You live your life too idealistically. You think it’s possible to opt out of the system. No regular income, no health insurance. You quit jobs on a dime. You think this is freedom but I still see the bare, painstakingly cheap way you live, the scrimping and saving, and that is not freedom either. You move in circumscribed circles. You move peripherally, on the margins of everything, pirating movies and eating dollar slices. I used to admire this about you, how fervently you clung to your beliefs—I called it integrity—but five years of watching you live this way changed me. In this world, money is freedom. Opting out is not a real choice. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

13 " I have always lived in the myth of New York more than in its reality. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

14 " It was the anonymity. He wanted to be unknown, unpossessed by others' knowledge of him. That was freedom. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

15 " All the lights were off, and I just lay there, trying to pass the hours before I had to get up and go to work, which was impossible when the night was so loud. My neighbor’s electric air conditioner, the bass pumping from other people’s cars. They were all converging together to say one thing: You are alone. You are alone. You are alone. You are truly and really alone. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

16 " Upon seeing Utah for the first time, Tarkovsky remarked that now he knew Americans were vulgar because they filmed westerns in a place that should only serve as backdrop to films about God. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

17 " Let us return, then, as we do in times of grief, for the sake of pleasure but mostly for the need for relief, to art. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

18 " Jonathan had become increasingly disillusioned with living in New York. Something along the lines of: the city, New York fucking City, tedious and boring, its charms as illusory as its facade of authenticity. Its lines were too long. Everything was a status symbol and everything cost too much. There were so many on-trend consumers, standing in lines for blocks to experience a fad dessert, gimmicky art exhibits, a new retail concept store. We were all making such uninspired lifestyle choices. We, including me. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

19 " There is mystery to how faith takes root and flourishes, how need transforms into belief. "

― Ling Ma , Severance

20 " It is too depressing, too soul-crushingly sad, to reminisce. The past is a black hole, cut into the present day like a wound, and if you come too close, you can get sucked in. You have to keep moving. "

― Ling Ma , Severance