Wanderers

Moon in the sky, stars out, the wide-open expanse of nothing: it made him feel free and alive as the daytime never did.

That is how science and medicine are practiced best, though—we are best when we admit our ignorance up front, and then attempt to fill the darkness of not-knowing with the light of information and knowledge.

I love you in the future tense: I will love you, tomorrow and the day after and the day after that until there are no more days left for us.

Here’s how we do things in America: We identify a problem, then we promptly ignore it until it’s not just biting our ass, but it’s already eaten the right cheek and has started on the left.

Humankind was a disease. The earth was the body. Climate change was the fever.

And better still, reference librarians served well in the role that the internet never did: They were the perfect bouncers at the door of bad information. Or, put differently, they were the best vectors to transmit truth.

We laugh so that we don't scream.

Some people are just trash, and they find other trash and start to form a landfill. The internet makes it easier.

But God was never about power over us. It was about the power we possessed to either be good and in His graces, or be selfish and wretched in His shadow. So to speak. Hell is being in that shadow. It's not in the next world, but this one, right now, anytime you choose not to do the right thing.

Hell, nobody's okay. Maybe we never were, and we damn sure aren't now. But we're here. Until we're not. And that's all I find it fair to ask for.

You didn’t change anyone’s mind about politics by hammering away at them—all that did was drive the nail deeper into the wall of their own certainty.

I heard that if you complain it reprograms your brain like a computer virus and it just makes you more and more unhappy, so I’m going to stay positive because I bet the opposite is true, too.

In them and between them flourished the heat of life, the madness of love, and the sudden absolute certainty of the end of all that they knew.

The best gift you can give somebody is a surprise because they never forget.

For him, libraries served as that escape: They were routinely calm, if not always quiet, and of course they surrounded him with books. Sweet, sweet books. Each book, a treasure chest of knowledge.

Dreams were not made on the internet; they were killed there. By mean, nasty little shits who were all looking to one-up each other.

Somehow, the disappearance of coffee feels worse than the disappearance of all humankind.

THIS IS HOW THE WORLD ends, with both a bang and a whimper.

A grotesque thought struck Benji: Humankind was a disease. The earth was the body. Climate change was the fever. And in that fever, in that rising of global temperature, the earth was able to release new defenses. White Mask was not here to kill the world. It was here to kill the people—the fungus would serve as a vicious defense mechanism to eradicate the infection of humanity. This epidemic represented antibodies to restore balance to the body. Kill the parasite and save the host.

He was just another user claiming the mantle of a "Good Christian." Like so many of the world bullies and abusers, choosing to find shelter in the faith -- using their religiosity as both shield and sword.

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.

You're brave and smart and kind and I'd be a fool not to trust you.

and she saw another bit of ink, one she didn’t recognize: a sword and a hammer encircled by a snake. She didn’t know what it meant, exactly, but it was probably more Nazi white-guy shit, because it was always Nazi white-guy shit.

A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke. —Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, part 1

The great lesson of that game was, similar to pinball, that one never truly won at Jenga. Eventually, the lesson went, the tower would fall. It could not remain standing because that was the nature of towers and time and human intervention: Just because it did not fall on your turn did not mean it would not fall. It would. Because all things fell. All things ended. The best you could do was let it crumble and build it anew.

Pete Corley stood up—which was like watching a closet full of broomsticks animating all at once under a sorcerer’s spell.

Oh no, the untamed wilds of third-world-country Canada. Who knows, maybe these pills are just beaver pelts and maple syrup.

one of the truest things about people is that they will laugh in the face of terror, tragedy, and sadness

Maybe it’s from the Greek word for “apocalypse”—apokálypsis. An uncovering. A revealing.