Home > Work > Dead Astronauts (Borne, #2)
1 " But, in the end, joy cannot fend off evil.Joy can only remind you why you fight. "
― Jeff VanderMeer , Dead Astronauts (Borne, #2)
2 " Do you understand? Nothing thrives without being broken. Nothing exists without being dead first. "
3 " They killed us with traps. They killed us with poisons. They killed us with snares. They killed us with guns. They killed us with knives. They strangled us. They trampled us. They tore us apart with hounds. They baited steel-jawed traps. They starved us out. They burned us alive. They withheld water. They killed all our prey. They slit our throats. They filled in our burrows. They drowned us. They trampled us under horses’ hooves. They bred us for fur and bludgeoned us to death. They kept us in cages so small with so many we burst apart. They suffocated us with poison gas. They strangled us. They put us in sacks and beat us with clubs. They cut out our tongues so we bled to death. They skinned us alive. They detonated rock and stopped our hearts all unknowing. They swung us by our tails and smashed our skulls against stones. They murdered us in each and every year. They murdered us on each and every day. "
4 " And a soul is just a delusion that lives in the body. No delusion survives death. Death is more honest than that. "
5 " Because dead things felt only love for the universe. "
6 " That tablecloth created by forced labor looks amazing on that table manufactured with formaldehyde in a sweatshop. "
7 " The banal drawling frowning speech of men who don’t care about what they’re doing. Until forced to. Who all unawares destroy their own warrens, who poison their own food, convinced of righteousness. "
8 " What is too much to bear? Not being alive is too much to bear. "
9 " You wouldn’t understand me even if I made sense. "
10 " A creator who no longer remembered the creation: Wasn’t that one definition of a god? "
11 " Also, Moss liked to rescue whatever animal or plant needed it. She believed they had earned it. "
12 " Be still that human need. To fill the silence with words. "
13 " There was no moment like any other moment and yet each moment was the same. "
14 " What am I? How am I connected? What is my purpose? What is all of this, felt in the flesh? Why is it so beautiful? What is beautiful? Why do I not know? What else don't I know? When will I know it? Will I ever know? Would knowing be too much? "
15 " In the end, if you change the enemy enough, if you wear them down, perhaps losing is good enough. "
16 " I dearly wished the joy of triangulation, the pounce based on a good ear’s geometry. "
17 " This plastic disk.” “And you throw it.” “Why?” “For fun.” “Team sport. "
18 " That love must be unbending. Love must be cruel. Love must not yield. Otherwise, love meant nothing, could do nothing. "
19 " Most had bellies full of plastic. The plastic would grow and grow in their bellies until, years from now, as they mingled, as they drank expensive wine, their bellies would burst and out would come all the plastic, dribbling onto the floor. Pressing cool and bloody against some synthetic floor. "
20 " Do you have the new phone yet that someone made continents away because they were forced to and then someone else starved to death because when they mined the components they destroyed all the crop lands and the forest? "