Isaac Marion

“My mind has cleared a little; I’ve regained some instincts and associations, echoes of the Living world if not actual memories. Those I still have to steal.”

“I mean obviously, staying alive is pretty fucking important . . . but there’s got to be something beyond that, right?”

“My mom used to say that’s why we have memory. And the opposite of memory—hope. So things that are gone can still matter. So we can build off our pasts and make futures.”

“I wish I could read what she's written there. Instead, I pretend the letters are stars. The words, constellations.”

“I adapt to things quickly, including good things, which I wish I could shut off sometimes.”

“Music? Music is life! It’s physical emotion - you can touch it! It’s neon ecto-energy sucked out of spirits and switched into sound waves for your ears to swallow. Are you telling me, what, that it’s boring? You don’t have time for it?”

“I've always been interested in writing from the perspective of an outsider.”

“You can order yourself to treasure a moment, to cling tight to a feeling and never let it fade, but it’s your brain, that three-pound lump of hamburger, that makes the final call.”

“That's why we have memory. And the opposite of memory— hope. So things that are gone can still matter. So we can built off our pasts and make future.”

“What's wrong with people?" she says, almost too quiet for me to hear. "Were they born with parts missing or did it fall out somewhere along the way?”

“You won’t starve, R. In my short life I made so many choices just because I thought they were required, but my dad was right: there’s no rule book for the world. It’s in our heads, our collective human hive-mind. If there are rules, we’re the ones making them. We can change them whenever we want to.”

“I am Dead, but it's not so bad. I've learned to live with it.”

“Every time I go to sleep, I know I may never wake up. How could anyone expect to? You drop your tiny, helpless mind into a bottomless well, crossing your fingers and hoping when you pull it out on its flimsy fishing wire it hasn't been gnawed to bones by nameless beasts below.”

“In the darkest and strangest of places with the most macabre of company, this music moves her and her life pulses hard... And even for Julie's safety, I can't bring myself to smother it.”

“It frustrates and fascinates me that we'll never know for sure, that despite the best efforts of historians and scientists and poets, there are some things we'll just never know. What the first song sounded like. How it felt to see the first photograph. Who kissed the first kiss, and if it was any good.”

“Mozart,” Julie says in a bitter chuckle, staring at the speaker. “It’s supposed to be the pinnacle of art, right? This transcendent human achievement? And we use it for background noise in bathrooms. We literally shit on it.”

“Your dreamers. You ridiculous children. You dancing grinning fuckups. Here is your bright future. Your earnest, saccharine hope. How does it taste dripping from the neck of everyone you love?”

“Sex, once a law as undisputed as gravity, has been disproved. The equation is erased, the blackboard broken”

“...thinking all this maximalism would somehow generate happiness?”

“My favorite songs change every year.”