M.T. Anderson > Quotes

“There are times when friendship feels like running down a hill together as fast as you can, jumping over things, spinning around, and you don't care where you're going, and you don't care where you've come from, because all that matters is speed, and the hands holding your hands.”
― M.T. Anderson, Whales on Stilts: M. T. Anderson's Thrilling Tales

“We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.”
― M. T. Anderson, Feed

“We Americans are interested only in the consumption of our products. We have no interest in how they are produced, or what happens to them once we discard them, once we throw them away.”
― M. T. Anderson, Feed

“The natural world is so adaptable...So adaptable you wonder what's natural.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“There's an ancient saying in Japan, that life is like walking from one side of infinite darkness to another, on a bridge of dreams. They say that we're all crossing the bridge of dreams together. That there's nothing more than that. Just us, on the bridge of dreams.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“…It’s like a spiral: They keep making everything more basic so it will appeal to everyone. And gradually, everyone gets used to everything being basic, so we get less and less varied as people, more simple. So the corps make everything even simpler. And it goes on and on.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“...they told me of color, that it was an illusion of the eye, an event in the perceiver's mind, not in the object; they told me that color had no reality; indeed, they told me that color did not inhere in a physical body any more than pain was in a needle.

And then they imprisoned me in darkness; and though there was no color there, I still was black, and they still were white; and for that, they bound and gagged me.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Pox Party

“Whispering makes a narrow place narrower.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“I am messaging you to say that I love you, and that you're completely wrong about me thinking you're stupid. I always thought you could teach me things. I was always waiting. You're not like the others. You say things that no one expects you to. You think you're stupid. You want to be stupid. But you're someone people could learn from.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“At long last, you may no longer distinguish what binds you from what is you.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Pox Party

“We all flee in hope of finding some ground of security”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“Empedolces claims that in utero, our backbone is one long solid; and that through the constriction of the womb and the punishments of birth it must be snapped again and again to form our vertebrae; that for the child to have a spine, his back must first be broken”
― M.T. Anderson, The Pox Party

“It’s the end. It’s the end of the civilization. We’re going down.

No, it’s sure not too attractive. Lenticels.

I just hope my kids don’t live to see the last days. The things burning and people living in cellars.
Violet.
The only thing worse than the thought it may all come tumbling down is the thought that we may go on like this forever.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“You made her apologize for sickness. For her courage. You made her feel sorry for dying.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“I do not know what I regret. I sit with my pen, and cannot find an end to that sentence.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Pox Party

“I don't know when they first had feeds. Like maybe, fifty or a hundred years ago. Before that, they had to use their hands and their eyes. Computers were all outside the body. They carried them around outside of them, in their hands, like if you carried your lungs in a briefcase and opened it to breathe.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“ We enter a time of calamity. Blood on the tarmac. Fingers in the juicer. Towers of air frozen in the lunar wastes. Models dead on the runways, with their legs facing backward. Children with smiles that can’t be undone. Chicken shall rot in the aisles. See the pillars fall.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“Then it was this big thing. She was like, 'I never want to see you again', and I was like, 'Fine. Okay? Fine. Then get some special goggles.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“People talk about the beauty of the spring, but I can't see it. The trees are brown and bare, slimy with rain. Some are crawling with new purple hairs. And the buds are bulging like tumorous acne, and I can tell that something wet, and soft, and cold, and misshapen is about to be born.

And I am turning into a vampire.”
― M.T. Anderson, Thirsty

“I wanted to say something to cheer her up. I had a feeling that cheering her up might be a lot of work. I was thinking of how sometimes, trying to say the right thing to people, it’s like some kind of brain surgery, and you have to tweak exactly the right part of the lobe. Except with talking, it’s more like brain surgery with old, rusted skewers and things, maybe like those things you use to eat lobster, but brown. And you have to get exactly the right place, and you’re touching around in the brain but the patient, she keeps jumping and saying, “Ow.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“My idea of life, it's what happens when they're rolling the credits.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“You need the noise of your friends in space.”
― M. T. Anderson, Feed

“I miss that time. The cities back then, just after the forests died, were full of wonders, and you'd stumble on them--these princes of the air on common rooftops--the rivers that burst through the city streets so they ran like canals--the rabbits in parking garages--the deer foaling, nestled in Dumpsters like a Nativity.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“I looked at her, and she was smiling like she was broken.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“...for reading, once begun, quickly becomes home and circle and court and family, and indeed, without narrative, I felt exiled from my own country. By the transport of books, that which is most foreign becomes one's familiar walks and avenues; while that which is most familiar is removed to delightful strangeness; and unmoving, one travels infinite causeways, immobile and thus unfettered.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Pox Party

“I can read. A little. I kind of protested it in School(TM). On the grounds that the silent 'E' is stupid.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“…what the President meant in the intercepted chat. This was, uh, nothing but a routine translation problem. It has to be understood, that…It has to be understood that when the President referred to the Prime Minister of the Global Alliance as a ‘big sh*thead,’ what he was trying to convey was, uh—this is an American idiom used to praise people, by referring to the sheer fertilizing power of their thoughts. The President meant to say that the Prime Minister’s head was fertile, just full of these nutrients where ideas can grow. It really was a compliment…”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“We are the nation of dreams. We are seers. We are wizards. We speak in visions. Our letters are like flocks of doves, released from under our hats. We have only to stretch out our hand and desire, and what we wish for settles like a kerchief in our palm. We are a race of sorcerers, enchanters. We are Atlantis. We are the wizard-isle of Mu.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“Maybe these are our salad days."
"Huh?"
"You know. Happy."
"What's happy about a salad?"
She shrugged. "Ranch," she said.”
― M.T. Anderson, Feed

“He held out the written pass. "This is what they want us to be," he said. "They want us to be nothing but a bill of sale and a letter explaining where we is and instructions for where we go and what we do. They want us empty. They want us flat as paper. They want to be able to carry our souls in their hands, and read them out loud in court. All the time, they're on the exploration of themselves, going on the inner journey into their own breast. But us, they want there to be nothing inside of. They want us to be writ on. They want us to be a surface. Look at me, I'm mahogany."
I protested, "A man is known by his deeds."
"Oh, that's sure," said Bono. "Just like a house is known by its deeds. The deeds say who owns it, who sold it, and who'll be buying a new one when it gets knocked down.”
― M.T. Anderson, The Pox Party