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A Short Stay in Hell QUOTES

A Short Stay in Hell QUOTES

1 " [Y]ou are here to learn something. Don’t try to figure out what it is. This can be frustrating and unproductive. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

2 " The days passed in a dream. I pictured our reunion again and again, played it out in my mind over and over until I’d almost worn a groove in my thoughts, so deep that it seemed the only thing I could think of was our reunion. Anticipation is a gift. Perhaps there is none greater. Anticipation is born of hope. Indeed it is hope’s finest expression. In hope’s loss, however, is the greatest despair. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

3 " It took a couple of months before we were both convinced there were no rules about sexual activities in Hell and our spouses were not going to show up out of the blue. It was hard to start a sexual relationship in circumstances of such bizarre uncertainty, especially for an active Mormon and a good Christian, both lost in a Zoroastrian Hell. We were like virgin newlyweds. All my life I’d been raised to believe this kind of thing was wrong. All my life I had lived with a strong sense of morality. How do you give it up? How do you do things you thought you’d never do? Where do all the things you believed go, when all the supporting structure is found to be a myth? How do you know how or on what to take a moral stand, how do you behave when it turns out there are no cosmic rules, no categorical imperatives? It was difficult. So tricky to untangle. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

4 " It seemed funny that one day I would go to bed in her arms and the next not feel anything, like a switch had gone off. But no, that wasn’t honest either. This had been building for a long time. Our silences were getting longer. Our arguments more frequent. How do you stay with someone when there are no dreams to build? No purpose to accomplish? No meaning? No meaning —that was the monster that drove us away from one another in the end. Always. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

5 " I could tell you of occasionally, every eon, meeting a person, with whom I might stay for a billion years. But what of it? After a billion years there is nothing left to say, and you wander apart, uncaring in the end. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

6 " Here, her hand in mine was the one reality that severed us from the cold click-clack of Hell. I rubbed her hand and she sighed; wasn’t that meaning? Wasn’t that something we could cling to? I could be with this other. I could form no other relation, but maybe her hand in mine was enough, both sufficient and necessary. In Hell there was no sense of place, because all places were the same. Uniform monotony. A place without place. A place without context. But, here, now, I could rub her hand and she would sigh. She was a difference. Perhaps each person was the only difference in all these halls of unchanging ranks of books, kiosks, clocks, and carpet, and that, and that, at least, we had to hold to. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

7 " Strange, how a moment of existence can cut so deeply into our being that while ages pass unnoticed, a brief love can structure and define the very topology of our consciousness ever after. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

8 " I feared the defining point of this Hell was its unrelenting uniformity, its lack of variation from type. If there was a heaven at the end of this, it must be filled with great variety, perhaps a multiplicity of intelligent species spread across universes. Yes, heaven would be as full of difference as Hell was of sameness. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

9 " Remember you are never really alone. Although it may feel like it for very long stretches of time. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

10 " Yet a strange hope remains. A hope that somehow, something, God, the demon, Ahura Mazda, someone, will see I'm trying. I'm really trying, and that will be enough. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

11 " There is a despair that goes deeper than existence; it runs to the marrow of consciousness, to the seat of the soul. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

12 " Where do all the things you believed go, when all the supporting structure is found to be a myth? How do you know how or on what to take a moral stand, how do you behave when it turns out there are no cosmic rules, no categorical imperatives? "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

13 " I don’t really doubt – I just want to. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

14 " Anticipation is a gift. Perhaps there is none greater. Anticipation is born of hope. Indeed it is hope’s finest expression. In hope’s loss, however, is the greatest despair. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

15 " Maybe God was a demon – that would explain much of the misery of earth life. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

16 " But what worse fate could there be? To remember love and know it is unattainable? "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

17 " The absurdity of it has never left me. We can’t care about anything here. We can’t make a difference – all meaning has been subtracted, we don’t know where anything comes from or where it goes. There’s no context for our lives. We’re all white, equal ciphers, instances of the same absurdity repeated over and over. We try to scratch some hope or meaning out of it with our university, but ultimately there is nothing to attach meaning to. We’re damned. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

18 " God had created the universe as a way of sorting through the great library, finding those books that were most beautiful and meaningful. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

19 " My dad was still living when I died. I hope he ends up in a nice Hell. A "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell

20 " The difference in the quality of consciousness between dreaming and being awake was close to the difference between our old earth life and the one there. "

― Steven L. Peck , A Short Stay in Hell