Isaac Marion Quotes

Now I'm just standing here on the conveyor. Along for the ride. I reach the end, turn around, and go back the other way. The world has been distilled. Being dead is easy. After a few hours of this, I notice a female on the opposite conveyor. She doesn't lurch or groan like most of us. Her head just lolls from side to side. I like that about her. That she doesn't lurch or groan. I catch her eye and stare at her. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

You might say that death has relaxed me. ~ Isaac Marion

Enough white lies can scorch the earth black. ~ 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. ~ Isaac Marion

We sit against the tiles of the bathroom wall with our legs sprawled out in front of us, passing the brain back and forth, taking small, leisurely bites and enjoying brief flashes of human experience.
'Good ... shit,' M wheezes. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

At the Arrivals gate, we are greeted by a small crowd, watching us with hungry eyes or eyesockets. We drop our cargo on the floor: two mostly intact men, a few meaty legs, and a dismembered torso, all still warm. Call it leftovers. Call it takeout. Our fellow Dead fall on them and feast right there on the floor like animals. The life remaining in those cells will keep them from full-dying, but the Dead who don't hunt will never quite be satisfied. Like men at sea deprived of fresh fruit, they will wither in their deficiencies, weak and perpetually empty, because the new hunger is a lonely monster. It grudgingly accepts the brown meat and lukewarm blood, but what it craves is closeness, that grim sense of connection that courses between their eyes and ours in those final moments, like some dark negative of love. ~ Isaac Marion

God has made us study partner. We need to talk about our project. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

Are my words ever actually audible, or do they just echo in my head while people stare at me, waiting? ~ Isaac Marion

She is Living and I'm Dead, but I'd like to believe we're both human. Call me an idealist. ~ Isaac Marion

Now here is an oddity. A question for the zombie philosophers. What does it mean that my past is a fog but my present is brilliant, bursting with sound and color? Since I became Dead I've recorded new memories with the fidelity of an old cassette deck, faint and muffled and ultimately forgettable. But I can recall every hour of the last few days in vivid detail, and the thought of losing a single one horrifies me. Where am I getting this focus? This clarity? I can trace a solid line from the moment I met Julie all the way to now, lying next to her in this sepulchral bedroom, and despite the millions of past moments I've lost or tossed away like highway trash, I know with a lockjawed certainty I'll remember this one for the rest of my life. ~ Isaac Marion

The shadows of the room pool in the lines of our faces, draining our eyes of hue. There's nothing left worth saying. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

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

Everything you see, you might be seeing for the last time. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

These people, these beautiful Living women, they don't seem to make the connection between me and the creatures that keep killing everything they love. They allow me to be an exception, and I feel humbled by this gift. I want to pay it back somehow, earn their forgiveness. I want to repair the world I've helped destroy. ~ Isaac Marion

We're fumbling in the dark, but at least we're in motion. ~ Isaac Marion

We smile, because this is how we save the world. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

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) ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

Looks ... supernatural, almost. Do they ever change color? Like when you kill people or something?"
I try not to sigh. "I think ... you're thinking ... of vampires. ~ Isaac Marion

This is my greatest obstacle, the biggest of all the boulders littering my path. 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, it all collapses. ~ Isaac Marion

Sometimes it's a struggle to live in the moment. ~ Isaac Marion

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

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. ~ Isaac Marion

Once again the absurdity of my inner thoughts overwhelms me, and I want to crawl out of my skin, escape my ugly, awkward flesh and be a skeleton, naked and anonymous. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

I used to split my time between writing, music and painting. I would work on a book and then abandon it, start a band, do an album, quit music, then do a gallery show. Eventually I decided to give writing a serious shot. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

But I'm not afraid of the skeletons in Julie's closet. I look forward to meeting the rest of them, looking them hard in the eye, giving them firm, bone-crunching handshakes. ~ Isaac Marion

Breathing is optional, but I need some air. ~ Isaac Marion

Was it just fear? the voices wonder. We were fearful in the best of times; how could we cope with the worst? So we found the tallest walls and poured ourselves behind them. We kept pouring until we were biggest and strongest, elected the greatest generals and found the most weapons, thinking all this maximalism would somehow generate happiness. But nothing so obvious could ever work. ~ Isaac Marion

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

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

He is spent. His mind is mercury again, its brief surge of humanity melting into an oily residue on its surface, and he no longer understands the feelings he felt in that strange moment on the overpass.
But he did feel them. They did happen. They rest on the murky seabed of his mind, buried under sand and silt and miles of grey waves. Patient seeds waiting for light. ~ Isaac Marion

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? ~ Isaac Marion

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

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. ~ Isaac Marion

Good people care more about people than food. They try to help people and don't give up even when they get hungry. Only bad people give up. But good people fix things. Good people stay good even when it's hard to. Even if they're sick or sad or they have to lose their favorite stuff. Even if they have to die. Good people see past their own fucking lives. They aren't just hunger and math. They aren't just animals. Good people are part of the Higher, good people are fuel for the sun. ~ Isaac Marion

Perhaps I died years ago, and Hell is a flooded planet of starving children and walking corpses and endless, senseless war. ~ Isaac Marion

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

I would like my life to be a movie so I could cut to a montage. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

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

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. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

My "heart". Does that pitiful organ still represent anything? It lies motionless in my chest, pumping no blood, serving no purpose, and yet my feelings still seem to originate inside its cold walls. My muted sadness, my vague longing, my rare flickers of joy. They pool in the center of my chest and seep out of there, diluted and faint, but real. ~ Isaac Marion

I want a new past,new memories, a new first handshake with love. I want to start over in every possible way. ~ Isaac Marion

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

My mind is full of hornets. ~ Isaac Marion

Maybe creatures that are not like each other are supposed to hurt each other to find out which one is stronger, so that the stronger one can take the things it wants. A competition. A game. War! Sex! Football! ~ Isaac Marion

I think the world has mostly ended because the cities we wander through are as rotten as we are. Buildings have collapsed. Rusted cars clog the streets. Most glass is shattered and the wind drifting through the hollow high-rises moans like an animal left to die. I don't know what happened. Disease? War? Social collapse? Or was it just us? The Dead replacing the Living? I guess it's not so important. Once you're arrived at the end of the world, it hardly matters which road you took. ~ Isaac Marion

It's a strange feeling, being so utterly surrounded by her. Her life scent is on everything. She's on me and under me and next to me. It's as if the entire room is made out of her. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

Here we are on the road. We must be going somewhere. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

Nature is hungry. It is ready to take back what the man stole from it by living. ~ Isaac Marion

What wonderful thing didn't start out scary? ~ Isaac Marion

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

Responsible murder is the new recycling. ~ Isaac Marion

It's easy if you try. ~ Isaac Marion

Has your life gone on long after the thrill of living is gone? Are the dreams in which you're dying the best you've ever had? ~ Isaac Marion

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

Prepositions are painful, articles are arduous, adjectives are wild overachievements. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

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

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. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

Two years ago today my father was crushed under the wall he was building, and I became an orphan. ~ Isaac Marion

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 ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

Maybe this is why I sleep only a few hours a month. I don't want to die again. This has become clearer and clearer to me recently, a desire so sharp and focused I can hardly believe it's mine: I don't want to die. I don't want to disappear. I want to stay. ~ Isaac Marion

The Dead are a larger army than any ever assembled, and they follow no leader, fear no threat, and accept no bribe or compromise. The Dead are the silent majority, and should they ever decide to say something, it will be the new law of the land. ~ Isaac Marion

I'm alone, stumbling through the city in the dark, trying not to let the night freeze my blood. ~ Isaac Marion

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

I can't seem to make myself care about anything to the right or left of the present. ~ Isaac Marion

Is equally young and foolish in the wide lens of history, and the arrogant denial of this is what unraveled the world. ~ Isaac Marion

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

Life only makes any sense if we can see time how God does. Past, present, and future all at once. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

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

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

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

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. ~ Isaac Marion

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? ~ Isaac Marion

There on the hot white roof of humanity's last outpost, we look out over our rapidly, hopelessly, irretrievably changing world, and we sing: Nothing's gonna change my world. Nothing's gonna change my world. ~ Isaac Marion

I can no longer believe in any voodoo spell or laboratory virus. This is something deeper, darker. This comes from the cosmos, from the stars, or the unknown blackness behind them. The shadows in God's boarded-up basement. ~ Isaac Marion

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. ~ Isaac Marion

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