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The City in the Middle of the Night QUOTES

The City in the Middle of the Night QUOTES

1 " I can't do this thing anymore, where we live in a tiny space and pretend it's the whole world. People always have brand-new reasons for doing the same thing over and over. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

2 " She had a feeling it was never going to be that simple, that she couldn't just serve meatloaf and tell herself she was honoring the dead. The dead were just like the living: they all wanted something they could never have. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

3 " I don't even notice the mob until it's rushing toward me.
They snort and pant, ash-colored jackets swirling as their arms and legs pull at the air. A few hundred of them stampede in my direction, and there’s no way to escape. I’m convinced that I’m about to be swept away. I’ll kick, I’ll struggle, but their momentum will be too much for me. They’ll carry me to justice. No escape this time.
But the mob reaches me and keeps moving. They’re heading somewhere, and I just got in their way. I stop fighting, and move in the same direction as everyone else, and soon the crowd shelters me, buries me inside its raucousness. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

4 " Part of how they make you obey is by making obedience seem peaceful, while resistance is violence. But really, either choice is about violence, one way or another. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

5 " Hernan always says that a perfect moment of beauty can last forever. But maybe some moments are so ugly that they never end, either. All you can do is be patient with yourself. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

6 " Listen to yourself, hear your own footsteps, your breaths, your heartbeats, oh, how many rhythms you make as you come and go! you are an orchestra. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

7 " The only thing that makes life tolerable is that people forget most of the stupid things I say as soon as I finish saying them. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

8 " to join with others to shape a future is the holiest act. This is hard work, and it never stops being hard, but this collective dreaming/designing is the only way we get to keep surviving, and this practice defines us as a community. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

9 " You might mistake understanding for forgiveness, but if you did, then the unforgiven wrong would catch you off guard, like a cramp, just as you reached for generosity. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

10 " Maybe you don’t get to choose how you make peace, or what kind of peace you make. You count yourself lucky if peace doesn’t run away from you. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

11 " And these lovers had discovered a powerful thrill, a joy that went all the way down to their stomachs, in weaving a big idea together. Like some wild rapture, the sensation of helping others to imagine something bigger than yourselves. Somehow, this weird love story is the foundation of this community’s politics, or religion. Rose lingers on the oddest parts, like when they finally reveal their invention to the rest of the community, or the tenderness when the couple becomes a trio. I sense the echoes from all the countless other times that people have passed this legend around, and the lesson that comes with it: to join with others to shape a future is the holiest act. This is hard work, and it never stops being hard, but this collective dreaming/designing is the only way we get to keep surviving, and this practice defines us as a community. Even the other communities that live apart from the midnight city, scattered all over the night in smaller cities or towns, share this origin story. Just as she finishes explaining, we roll to a stop. I look out and see the unmistakable crags of the Old Mother rising over the permafrost, with just a tiny wedge of light behind it. I squint as hard as I can, but the light still burns. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

12 " Discovering a new phobia was like the opposite of falling in love. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

13 " There’s no starting over. There’s only starting again. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

14 " You only fantasize about princes when you’ve never seen one. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

15 " After many visits to the hammocks in the plaza, sharing the collective memory/dream, I realize that human civilization is based on forgetting. If I own a pair of shoes that used to belong to you, then my ownership relies on your forgetfulness. Humans are experts at storing knowledge and forgetting facts, which is why we saw this city from orbit and then pushed all the evidence into a hole. And I can’t help thinking of what Bianca said when I asked her about the Hydroponic Garden Massacre: that progress requires us to curate the past, to remove from history things that aren’t “constructive.” I don’t know if our power to forget makes humans stronger, more self-destructive, or maybe both. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

16 " People here are not accustomed to seeing economic disputes settled with guns, but every economy runs on bullets, one way or another. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

17 " People can stand things for the sake of politics that they would never endure for love or profit. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

18 " You could do whatever you felt like in Argelo, but so could everybody else. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

19 " But that thought just makes me wish that we could go back to our dorm after this party, to cradle our teacups and talk about books we’ve read, brand-new ideas we’ve discovered, things that nobody but us realizes are wrong. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night

20 " That’s what history is, really,” Bianca says, “the process for turning idiots into visionaries. "

― Charlie Jane Anders , The City in the Middle of the Night