I wanted to write about a postapocalyptic world where our civilization was not looked back on with awe and admiration, as it is in so many books of the genre, but disdained as the fuckwits we are, who wrecked a perfect biosphere because we couldn’t be bothered not to.
Kick-starting the gas-guzzling subcompact go-cart of organic sentience is as easy as shoving it down a hill and watching the whole thing spontaneously explode.
The nicest room you’ve ever lived in doesn’t have to be clean and white or full of translucent fresh monkfish slices with pea shoots delicately balanced on top. It can just be the place you were happiest and safest from the wind.
But you can’t ever imagine what you’re going to care about when you turn into the version of you that’s waiting on the other side of five years from now. That’s a stranger waiting to ambush you, and all you can do is plant your feet and try not to get thrown.
Well!” said Charlotte, and she meant to say something more, something clever, something brave, but she simply had not been prepared to stare down an army of frogs today.
First Law of Heroics.” The Monaciello grinned up at a confused September. “Someone has to tell you it’s impossible, or the Quest can’t go on. Your friend has volunteered herself as a Non-Euclidean Companion, which is also necessary to proceed to the next stage.
Very juicy. Basted with vitamin C. I’ve got a feline mignon with your name on it, sweetheart.
It is not possible to posses so many colors and a hard heart.
Lives have apocalypses too. You just can’t know when you’re in it until the water is already closing over your head and all you can hear are volcanoes, one after the other, detonating the possibility of the future you imagined.
Then we’d go to sleep and dream the same dreams. We always dreamed the same dreams, which was like living twice.
Everyone says they only hate me because I annihilated hope and butchered our future, but I know better, and anyway, it’s a lie. Some people are just born to be despised. The Loathing of Tetley began small and grew bigger and bigger, like the Thames, until it swallowed me whole.
It’s my own little joke, even though the punchline is sadness. I think a joke like that is a present you make to yourself, so every time you say it, even if it hurts, you get a very cohesive feeling out of it, because the past you and the present you are talking to each other, and it’s nice to have friends.
All the hair dye diluted itself into the sea a long time ago and I hope the jellyfish enjoyed their time as platinum blondes, I really and honestly do.
At the end of every adventure, you must ask if it was ever really your adventure at all. Perhaps you were only an obstacle in someone else’s quest.
Mira, he supposed, had always lived in her own head and allowed others to visit once in a while. With advance notice. And extensive decontamination protocols.
What others call you, you become. It’s a terrible magic that everyone can do – so do it. Call yourself what you wish to become.
A man’s voice filled up my head from my jawbone up to the plates of my skull. The most beautiful and saddest voice that ever was... A voice like the whole old world calling up from the bottom of the sea. The man on Madeline Brix’s tape was saying he was happy, and he hoped I was happy, too.
She listens, and I wish I could give her a little gold trophy for it, but I can’t, because of all the things Fuckwits gave trophies for, they never thought listening like nothing exists but time and words was half as important as losing a volleyball tournament.
The kind of hope I have doesn’t begin and end with demanding everything go back to the way it was when it can’t, it can’t ever, that’s not how time works.
This strange woman down in the dark kissed me and held me, and in between she whispered over and over: Shhh. It’s okay. It’s okay.