Isaac Marion Quotes

Why am I doing this? Why do I want to know the names and functions of all the beautiful structures I've spent my years violating? Because I don't deserve to keep them anonymous. I want the pain of knowing them, and by extension myself: who and what I really am. Maybe with that scalpel, red hot and sterilized in tears, I can begin to carve out the rot inside me.

ARE YOU ASKING ME WHAT THOUGHTS YOU SHOULD THINK?? What kind of Orwellian police state do you think I'm running here? Think whatever thoughts come into your thinking device, sir. (response to a reader asking what to keep in mind while reading Warm Bodies)

Julie swears better than anyone I've known. She can draw from a vast vocabulary of filth and weave complex structures of inventive invective, or she can say what she needs to say using only variations of "fuck." She is a poet of profanity, and I suppress an instinct to applaud as she stomps around the room, squeezing her hand and spewing colourful couplets.

My response must be delicate but words are crude tools, prone to breaking what they're meant to repair. So I keep my mouth shut.

I have begun to wonder where I came from. The person I am now, this fumbling, stumbling supplicant ... was I built on the foundations of my old life, or did I rise from the grave a blank state? How much of me is inherited, and how much is my own creation? Questions that were once just idle musings have begun to feel strangely urgent. Am I firmly rooted to what came before? Or can I choose to deviate?

The past is made out of facts ... I guess the future is just hope.

And yet ...
But what if ...
I want to do something impossible. Something astounding and unheard of. I want to scrub the moss off the Space Shuttle and fly Julie to the moon and colonise it, or float a capsized cruise ship to some distant island where no one will protest us, or just harness the magic that brings me into the brains of the Living and use it to bring Julie into mine, because it's warm in here, it's quiet and lovely, and in here we aren't an absurd juxtaposition, we are perfect.

In my mind I am eloquent; I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thoughts. But when I open my mouth, everything collapses.

God damn it you asshole! Wake up or I'll fucking shoot you!

I look down at myself, but I don't need to. I can feel it. My hot blood is pounding through my body, flooding capillaries and lighting up cells like Fourth of July fireworks. I can feel the elation of every atom in my flesh, brimming with gratitude for the second chance they never expected to get. The chance to start over, to live right, to love right, to burn up in a fiery cloud and never again be buried in the mud. I kiss Julie to hide the fact that I'm blushing. My face is bright red and hot enough to melt steel.

Okay, corpse, a voice in my head says, and I feel a twitch in my belly, more like a gentle nudge than a kick. I'm going now. I'm sorry I couldn't be here for your battle; I was fighting my own. But we won, right? I can feel it. There's a shiver in our legs, a tremor like the Earth speeding up, spinning off into uncharted orbits. Scary, isn't it? But what wonderful thing didn't start out scary? I don't know what the next page is for you, but whatever it is for me I swear I'm not going to fuck it up. I'm not going to yawn off in the middle of a sentence and hide it in a drawer. Not this time. Peel off these dusty wool blankets of apathy and antipathy and cynical desiccation. I want life in all its stupid sticky rawness.

Okay.

Okay, R.

Here it comes.

It's more eerie to be alone in a city that's lit up and functioning than one that's a tomb. If everything were silent, one could almost pretend to be in nature. A forest. A meadow. Crickets and birdsong. But the corpse of civilization is as restless as the creatures that now roam the graveyards.

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?

Why is it beautiful that humanity keeps coming back? So does herpes.

I'm watching her talk. Watching her jaw move and collecting her words one by one as they spill from her lips. I don't deserve them. Her warm memories. I'd like to paint them over the bare plaster walls of my soul, but everything I paint seems to peel.

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

One of my father's lessons that stuck: lying to someone gives them power. Makes them the judge and you the defendant. Tell the truth and deal with the results. Lying's for pussies.

The harder a place is to reach, the more likely reaching it will be worthwhile.

I wake up next to a woman. I'm not sure which one. My eyes burn and my head throbs; even the pricey stuff does it. No matter how much you pay for the drink, you pay again in the morning.

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

Stop.
Breathe those useless breaths. Drop this piece of life you're holding to your lips. Where are you? How long have you been here? Stop now. You have to stop.
Squeeze shut your stinging eyes, and take another bite.

I guess I talk a lot of shit about Perry, but it's not like I'm such a shiny happy person either, you know? I'm a wreck too. I'm just ... still alive. A wreck in progress.

Our cadaverous cadre has been walking for little over a day ...

We cast out votes and raised our leaders, charming men and women with white teeth and silver tongues, and we shoved our many hopes and fears into their hands, believing those hands were strong because they had firm handshakes. They failed us, always. There was no way they could not fail us
they were human, and more importantly, so were we.

In front of a big aluminum building with a plywood cross on the roof, I kneel in a puddle and splash water on my face. I wash my mouth out with dirty gutter runoff and spit until I can't taste anything. That holy wooden "t" looms overhead, and I wonder if the Lord might ever find cause to approve of me, wherever and whatever he is.
Have you met him yet, Perry? Is he alive and well? Tell me he's not just the mouth of the sky. Tell me there's more looking down on us than that empty blue skull.

It's easy if you try.

What's the point of trying to fix a world we're so briefly in?

Is it stupid to waste time on stuff like that in a world like this? When everything might fall apart any minute?

No need to speak. No need to listen. Everything is already known. That is how things are done. Always has been. Always will be.

What I'm saying is, when you have weight like that in your life, you have to start looking for the bigger picture or you are gonna sink.

We shoved out many hopes and fears into their hands, believing those hands were strong because they had firm handshakes. They failed us, always. There was no way they could not fail us - they were human, and so were we.

Eating is not a pleasant business. I chew off a man's arm, and I hate it.
Of course if I don't eat all of him, if I spare his brain, he'll rise up and follow me back to the airport, and that might make me feel better. I'll introduce him to everyone, and maybe we'll stand around and groan for a while.

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.

You and I are victims of the same disease. We're fighting the same war, just different battles in different theaters, and it's way too late for me to hate you for anything, because we're the same damn thing. My soul, your conscience, whatever's left of me woven into whatever's left of you, all tangled up and conjoined. We're in this together, corpse.

My first life fled without a fight and left nothing behind, so I doubt it was a loss worth mourning. A man I don't remember mixed genes with a woman I can't recall, and I was called to the stage. I stumbled through the curtain, squinting into the blinding light of the birth canal, and after a brief and banal performance, I died.
This is the arc of the average life - unexamined, unremarked, unremarkable - and it should have ended there. In simpler times, life was a one-act play, and when it was over we took our bows and caught our roses and enjoyed any applause we earned, then the spotlight faded and we shuffled backstage to nibble crackers in the greenroom of eternity.

Every experience, good or bad, is a priceless collector's item.

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.

Some part of me remembers what snow is, but this is the first time my new mind has seen it. It softens the crumbled sidewalks and turns rusty rooftops white. It's beautiful. It crunches under my feet as I move toward the house, longing to understand.

In my palm I can feel the echo of her pulse, standing in for the absense of mine.

A month ago there was nothing on Earth I missed, enjoyed, or longed for. I knew I could lose everything and not feel anything, and I rested easy in that knowledge. But I'm growing tired of easy things.

My friend "M" says the irony of being a zombie is that everything is funny, but you can't smile, because your lips have rotted off.

I wish people were willing to dig a little deeper than the surface elements of a premise before tossing one story in with another.

'Warm Bodies' ended up becoming one of the most personal relatable things I've written.

I grab my stomach again. "Feel empty. Feel . . . dead." He nods. "Marr . . . iage." I glare at him. I shake my head and clutch my stomach harder.

It radiates out from him like a cloud of ghosts, countless hands clutching at the air, reaching out for ... something.

Humanity's debut novel you could say. Love, sex, blood, and tears. A journey to find eternal life. To escape death. It was written over four thousand years ago on clay tablets by people who tilled the mud and rarely lived past forty. It's survived countless wars, disasters, and plagues, and continues to fascinate to this day, because here I am, in the midst of modern ruin, reading it.

Breathing is optional, but I need some air.

There's not really such thing as 'good' or 'bad' people, there's just like…humanity. And it gets broken sometimes.

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?

hierarchies are lies. Because no one needs the alpha. He gets to the top by puffing and bluffing until we all believe he belongs there. When your power is built on ignorance, you don't want people talking to each other.

Don't know why you... say good-bye. I say... hello.

What happened to the world was gradual. I've forgotten what it actually was, but I have faint, fetal memories of what it was like. A smoldering dread that never really caught fire till there wasn't much left to burn. Each sequential step surprised us. Then one day we woke up, and everything was gone.

The sports arena Julie calls home is unaccountably large, perhaps one of those dual-event 'super venues' built for an era when the greatest quandary facing the world was where to put all the parties.

Prepositions are painful, articles are arduous, adjectives are wild overachievements.

I'd like to sit down with him and pick his brain, just a tiny bite somewhere in the frontal lobe to get a taste of his thoughts -Warm Bodies

I know I'm not going to say good-bye. And if these staggering refugees want to help, if they think they see something bigger here than a boy chasing a girl, then they can help, and we'll see what happens when we say yes while the rigor mortis world screams no.

Sometimes I wonder if he has a philosophy. Maybe even a worldview. I'd like to sit down with him and pick his brain, just a tiny bit somewhere in the frontal lobe to get a taste of his thoughts. But he's too much of a toughguy to ever be that vulnerable. - R on M

The kind of stuff I usually read is a bit more on the literary side, like books that I think are influential in the sense that they're doing pulpy subject matter in a refined way. Like 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy; I loved that book.

I hear someone calling my name - the one that I've earned and lived in and cared for, not the one pinned to me at birth and stained beyond recognition.

All the shitty stuff people do to themselves ... it can all be the same thing, you know? Just a way to drown out your own voice. To kill your memories without having to kill yourself.

I notice faint scars on her wrists and forearms, thin lines too symmetrical to be accidents.

What, you don't eat fat people?'
'Fat ... not alive. Waste product. Need meet.

The moment the light went out, everyone stopped pretending.

We eat and sleep and shuffle through the fog, walking a marathon with no finish line, no medals, no cheering.

This was the final weight that broke my mind's kneecaps.

The world that birthed that story is long gone, all its people are dead, but it continues to touch the present and future because someone cared enough about that world to keep it. To put it in words. To remember it.

Deep under our feet the Earth holds its molten breath, while the bones of countless generations watch us and wait.

And you know the craziest part, R?' she says.
'Sometimes I barely believe you're a zombie. Sometimes I think you're just wearing stage make-up, because when you smile ... it's pretty hard to believe.

After finishing my drink I feel a pressure in my lower regions, and I realize I have to piss. Since the Dead don't drink, urination is a rare event. I hope I can remember how to do it.

I don't know the pain she's speaking from, but I know it's deep. It makes her hard and yet so terribly soft. It's her thorns and it's her hand reaching out from the thicket.

Even as I think them, the words lose their context, dissolve into grains of absurdity in the vast ocean of day-to-day hunger.

I should stitch my mouth shut. Honesty is a compulsion that's damned me more than once. But I just can't hold it in anymore. The words build and explode out of me like an uncontainable sneeze.

SS: How would you describe your life in only 8 words?
IM: So, so, so, so, so, so, so awesome.

Writing isn't letters on paper. It's communication. It's memory.

No praise, no blame. Just so.

I look into Julie's face. Not just at it, but into it. Every pore, every freckle, every faint gossamer hair. And then the layers beneath them. The flesh and bones, the blood and brain, all the way down to the unknowable energy that swirls in her core, the life force, the soul, the fiery will that makes her more than meat, coursing through every cell and binding them together in millions to form her. Who is she, this girl? What is she? She is everything. Her body contains the history of life, remembered in chemicals. Her mind contains the history of the universe, remembered in pain, in joy and sadness, hate and hope and bad habits, every thought of God, past-present-future, remembered, felt, and hoped for all at once.

Stop shrugging, shrugger.

Nothing is permanent. Not even the end
of the world.

There is no ideal world for you to wait around for. The world is always just what it is now, and it's up to you how you respond to it.

How do I appear unthreatening when her lover's blood is running down my chin?

I imagine that's what being full-dead is like. And emptiness vast and absolute.

I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I'm drowning in ellipses.

You might say that death has relaxed me.

I think we crushed ourselves down over the centuries. Buried ourselves under greed and hate and whatever other sins we could find until our souls finally hit the rock bottom of the universe. And then they scraped a hole through it, into some ... darker place.

The knowledge feels grotesque in my mind but I grasp it and hold it tight, etching it deep into my memory. Why am I doing this? Why do I want to know the names and functions of all the beautiful structures I've spent my years violating? Because I don't deserve to keep them anonymous. I want the pain of knowing them and by extension myself: who and what I really am.

There's no benchmark for how life's "supposed" to happen. There is no ideal world for you to wait around for. The world is always just what it is now, it's up to you how you respond to it.

As residual life energy fades from the brain, the useless clutter is first to go. The movie quotes, the radio jingles, the celebrity gossip and political slogans, they all melt away, leaving only the most potent and wrenching of the memories. As the brain dies, the life inside clarifies and distills. It ages like a fine wine.

What does it mean that my past is a fog but my present is brilliant, bursting with sound and color?

I finally drift back to sleep. I'm in the darkness. The molecules of my mind are still scattered, and I float through oily black space, trying to swipe them up like fireflies. 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 that when you pull it out on its flimsy fishing wire it hasn't been gnawed to bones by nameless beasts below. Hoping you pull up anything at all.

I'm sorry I can't properly introduce myself, but I don't have a name anymore. Hardly any of us do. We lose them like car keys, forget them like anniversaries.

What happened? How did I get here? How could I have known that my choices mattered?

It's not like I'm such a shiny happy person either, you know? I'm a wreck too, I'm just ... still alive.

Thinking all this maximalism would somehow generate happiness?

I run through the dark entry corridor toward the light on the other end, wondering if this is a birth canal or the tunnel to Heaven. Am I coming or going? Either way, it's too late to reverse. Hidden in the gloom under a red evening sky, I step into the world of the Living.

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.

Maybe you're not such a monster, Mr Zombie. I mean, anyone who appreciates a good beer is at least halfway okay in my book.

She liked to keep her scent a mystery

The undead airport has its own crowds but no real activity. We don't do things; we wait for things to happen.

Is this muteness a real physical handicap? One of the many symptoms of being Dead?Or do we just have nothing left to say?

We are where we are, however we got here. What matters is where we go next.

Her life has seen little light. She is twelve years old but has a woman's weathered poise. Her abyss-blue eyes have a piercing focus that some adults find unsettling. [ ... ] She has fired a gun into a human head. She has watched a pile of bodies set alight. She has starved and thirsted, stolen food and given it away, and glimpsed the meaning of life by watching it end over and over.