Å befinne seg i et hull, på bunnen av et hull, i en nesten total ensomhet, og oppdage at det kun er skrivingen som kan redde en. Å ikke ha noe som helst tema for en bok, ingen ide til en bok, det er å befinne seg, nok en gang, foran en bok. En enorm tomhet. En mulig bok.

duene finnes; drømmene, dukkene
dreperne finnes; duene, duene;
dis, dioxin og dagene: dagene
finnes: dagene døden; og diktene
finnes: diktene, dagene, døden

"But how do you fight it?" Conor asked, his voice rough. "How do you fight all the different stuff inside?"
By speaking the truth, the monster said. As you spoke it just now."

"Stories don't always have happy endings."
This stopped him. Because they didn't, did they? That's one thing the monster had definitely taught him. Stories were wild, wild animals and went off in directions you couldn't expect.”

He was crouched in the septic tank watching this and he found it very pleasing. He saw in it an aspect of himself, of his part in things. He watched the boy’s mum mashing a hedgehog, turning panic stricken animal into watery blood-spike soup, and he loved it very much, same as Mrs Lartan stamping on a poisoned mouse to finish it off, same as John and Oliver shooting Jackdaws at the tip, same as Jean drowning wasps in her jam trap. One day as good as any in the human war against others

Og science fiction hjelper oss å utforske aktuelle, dagsaktuelle, problemstillinger. Den sier: sett at ... tenk om .. og prøver å vise oss konsekvensen av våre valg. Det er altså bare tilsynelatende at slik fiksjon foregår i fremtiden. Det er naturligvis oss selv - vårt her og nå - den vil fortelle om.

Almost everyone has an inborn need to create; in most people this is thwarted and forgotten, and the drive is pushed into other actives that are less threatening, less difficult, and less rewarding. In some people, the need to create is transmuted into the need to destroy."

Knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein is not the monster in Marys novel. Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein IS the monster in Marys novel.

“I am writing because they told me to never start a sentence with because. But I wasn't trying to make a sentence—I was trying to break free. Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey.”

"They bring her out. Not blindfolded, but eyes widened to the last sky, the last light. The last cold bites her fingers and her face, the stones bruise her bare feet. There will be more stones, before the end."

"Ma, there is so much I want to tell you. I was once foolish enough to believe knowledge would clarify, but some things are so gauzed behind layers of syntax and semantics, behind days and hours, names forgotten, salvaged and shed, that simply knowing the wound exists does nothing to reveal it.”

I noen få år trakk vi i livsdukens hjørner sammen og glattet ut ujevnhetene

Florida in the summer is a slow hot drowning

"We know the sound of the freeway better than we do rivers, the howl of distant trains better than wolf howls, we know the smell of gas and freshly wet concrete and burned rubber better than we do the smell of cedar or sage or even fry bread."

Our heads are on flags, jersey, and coins. Our heads were on the penny first, of course, the Indian cent, and then on the buffalo nickel, both before we could even vote as a people — which, like the truth of what happened in history all over the world, and like all that spilled blood from slaughter, is now out of circulation.

“I believe in a world where impossible things happen. Where love can outstrip brutality, can neutralize it, as though it never was, or transform it into something new and more beautiful. Where love can outdo nature.”

“Many people live and die without ever confronting themselves in the darkness. Pray that one day, you will spin around at the water’s edge, lean over, and be able to count yourself among the lucky.”

“Life falls apart. We try to get a grip and hold it together. And then we realize we don't want to hold it together.”

«Alt i verden begynte med et ja. Et molekyl sa ja til et annet molekyl og livet oppsto».

I told you I wanted to live in a world in which the antidote to shame is not honor, but honesty.