“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.”
―
Emily St. John Mandel,
Station Eleven
“Survival is insufficient.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“A fragment for my friend--If your soul left this earth I would follow and find youSilent, my starship suspended in night” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“What I mean to say is, the more you remember, the more you’ve lost.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“They spend all their lives waiting for their lives to begin.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“No one ever thinks they’re awful, even people who really actually are. It’s some sort of survival mechanism.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“It was gorgeous and claustrophobic. I loved it and I always wanted to escape.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“She had never entirely let go of the notion that if she reached far enough with her thoughts she might find someone waiting, that if two people were to cast their thoughts outward at the same moment they might somehow meet in the middle.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“The beauty of this world where almost everyone was gone. If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it?” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“My point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility
“She was thinking about the way she’d always taken for granted that the world had certain people in it, either central to her days or unseen and infrequently thought of. How without any one of these people the world is a subtly but unmistakably altered place, the dial turned just one or two degrees.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“But anyway, I look around sometimes and I think - this will maybe sound weird - it's like the corporate world's full of ghosts. And actually, let me revise that, my parents are in academia so I've had front row seats for that horror show, I know academia's no different, so maybe a fairer way of putting this would be to say that adulthood's full of ghosts.""I'm sorry, I'm not sure I quite --""I'm talking about these people who've ended up in one life instead of another and they are just so disappointed. Do you know what I mean? They've done what's expected of them. They want to do something different but it's impossible now, there's a mortgage, kids, whatever, they're trapped. Dan's like that.""You don't think he likes his job, then.""Correct," she said, "but I don't think he even realises it. You probably encounter people like him all the time. High-functioning sleepwalkers, essentially.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“Dr. Eleven: What was it like for you, at the end?Captain Lonagan: It was exactly like waking up from a dream.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“I've been thinking lately about immortality. What it means to be remembered, what I want to be remembered for, certain questions concerning memory and fame. I love watching old movies. I watch the faces of long-dead actors on the screen, and I think about how they'll never truly die. I know that's a cliché but it happens to be true. Not just the famous ones who everyone knows, the Clark Gables, the Ava Gardners, but the bit players, the maid carrying the tray, the butler, the cowboys in the bar, the third girl from the left in the nightclub. They're all immortal to me. First we only want to be seen, but once we're seen, that's not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“We traveled so far and your friendship meant everything. It was very difficult, but there were moments of beauty. Everything ends. I am not afraid.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“Jeevan found himself thinking about how human the city is, how human everything is. We bemoaned the impersonality of the modern world, but that was a lie, it seemed to him; it had never been impersonal at all. There had always been a massive delicate infrastructure of people, all of them working unnoticed around us, and when people stop going to work, the entire operation grinds to a halt. No one delivers fuel to the gas stations or the airports. Cars are stranded. Airplanes cannot fly. Trucks remain at their points of origin. Food never reaches the cities; grocery stores close. Businesses are locked and then looted. No one comes to work at the power plants or the substations, no one removes fallen trees from electrical lines. Jeevan was standing by the window when the lights went out.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“Survival is insufficient.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“A fragment for my friend--If your soul left this earth I would follow and find youSilent, my starship suspended in night” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“What I mean to say is, the more you remember, the more you’ve lost.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“They spend all their lives waiting for their lives to begin.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“No one ever thinks they’re awful, even people who really actually are. It’s some sort of survival mechanism.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“It was gorgeous and claustrophobic. I loved it and I always wanted to escape.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“She had never entirely let go of the notion that if she reached far enough with her thoughts she might find someone waiting, that if two people were to cast their thoughts outward at the same moment they might somehow meet in the middle.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“The beauty of this world where almost everyone was gone. If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it?” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“My point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility
“She was thinking about the way she’d always taken for granted that the world had certain people in it, either central to her days or unseen and infrequently thought of. How without any one of these people the world is a subtly but unmistakably altered place, the dial turned just one or two degrees.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“But anyway, I look around sometimes and I think - this will maybe sound weird - it's like the corporate world's full of ghosts. And actually, let me revise that, my parents are in academia so I've had front row seats for that horror show, I know academia's no different, so maybe a fairer way of putting this would be to say that adulthood's full of ghosts.""I'm sorry, I'm not sure I quite --""I'm talking about these people who've ended up in one life instead of another and they are just so disappointed. Do you know what I mean? They've done what's expected of them. They want to do something different but it's impossible now, there's a mortgage, kids, whatever, they're trapped. Dan's like that.""You don't think he likes his job, then.""Correct," she said, "but I don't think he even realises it. You probably encounter people like him all the time. High-functioning sleepwalkers, essentially.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“Dr. Eleven: What was it like for you, at the end?Captain Lonagan: It was exactly like waking up from a dream.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“I've been thinking lately about immortality. What it means to be remembered, what I want to be remembered for, certain questions concerning memory and fame. I love watching old movies. I watch the faces of long-dead actors on the screen, and I think about how they'll never truly die. I know that's a cliché but it happens to be true. Not just the famous ones who everyone knows, the Clark Gables, the Ava Gardners, but the bit players, the maid carrying the tray, the butler, the cowboys in the bar, the third girl from the left in the nightclub. They're all immortal to me. First we only want to be seen, but once we're seen, that's not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“We traveled so far and your friendship meant everything. It was very difficult, but there were moments of beauty. Everything ends. I am not afraid.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
“Jeevan found himself thinking about how human the city is, how human everything is. We bemoaned the impersonality of the modern world, but that was a lie, it seemed to him; it had never been impersonal at all. There had always been a massive delicate infrastructure of people, all of them working unnoticed around us, and when people stop going to work, the entire operation grinds to a halt. No one delivers fuel to the gas stations or the airports. Cars are stranded. Airplanes cannot fly. Trucks remain at their points of origin. Food never reaches the cities; grocery stores close. Businesses are locked and then looted. No one comes to work at the power plants or the substations, no one removes fallen trees from electrical lines. Jeevan was standing by the window when the lights went out.” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
Read More! Learn More!