Isaac Marion

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

“Julie y yo nos tumbamos de espalda bajo una manta gruesa, con montones de ropa de colchón en el piso duro como una roca. Es una sensación extraña, el estar tan completamente rodeado por ella. Su aroma de vida está en todo. Julie está en mí y bajo de mí y junto a mí. Es como si toda la sala estuviera hecha de ella." <3”

“No hizo falta mucho para reducir el castillo de naipes de la civilización. Solo unas pocas ráfagas y pasó, la balanza se inclinó, se rompió el encanto. Los buenos ciudadanos se dieron cuenta de que las líneas que habían dado forma a sus vidas eran imaginarias y se cruzaban con facilidad. Tenían deseos y necesidades y el poder para satisfacerlas, así que lo hicieron. En el momento en que se apagaron las luces, todo el mundo dejó de fingir.”

“Me agarro el estómago de nuevo. —Me siento vacío... Me siento...muerto. Él asiente. —Matri...monio.”

“I assumed it was perfect, that everyone was happy and beautiful and wanted for nothing, and in my numb, limited way I felt envy and wanted to eat them all the more”

“Miracles don't exist. There is cause and effect, dreams and reality. Living and Dead. Your hope is absurd. Your romanticism, embarrassing”

“This female and I have fallen in love”

“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)”

“Lo que intento decir es que este mundo está lleno de mierda y que topamos con ella a diario, pero no tenemos por qué bañarnos en mierda.”

“Mi amigo M dice que lo irónico de ser un zombie es que todo tiene gracia, pero no puedes sonreír porque se te han podrido los labios.”

“We will be the cure. Because we want it.”

“It's easy if you try.”

“What you are, I once was. What I am, you will become.”

“– De verdad crees que puedes mantener a salvo – me pregunta – Allí afuera, con ellos – Mi honestidad incurable me hace dudar y Julie frunce el ceño.– Sí – responde M por mí, exasperado – Él puede. Y yo… ayudaré.Asiento rápidamente.– M ayudará. Los demás… ayudarán. Además – añado con una sonrisa – puedes mantenerte a salvo tú misma.Se encoge de hombros con indiferencia.– Lo sé. Sólo quería ver lo que dirías.”

“Ahora sé que tengo una opción y elijo cambiar, no importa el costo”

“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.”

“No hay ningún mundo ideal que esperar. El mundo es siempre solamente lo que es ahora, y depende de ti ver cómo reaccionar a él”

“- ¿Por qué no puedes admitir que amaste la estúpida planta, papá? - Ella lo mira con una mezcla de asombro y frustración - No entiendo, ¿qué está mal en eso?- Porque es absurdo - le espera él, y el estado de ánimo de la sala de repente cambia - Puedes regar y podar una planta, pero no puedes �amar�, a una planta.Julie abre la boca para hablar, y luego la cierra.- Es una decoración sin sentido. Esta allí consumiendo tiempo y recursos, y entonces un día decide morir, no importa lo mucho que la regaras. Es absurdo darle una emoción a algo tan sin sentido y breve.”

“Este es mi gran obstáculo, la más grande de todas las limitaciones marcando mi camino. En mi mente soy elocuente; puedo escalar intrincados peldaños de palabras para llegar al más alto techo de la catedral y pintar mis pensamientos. Pero cuando abro mi boca, todo se viene abajo”

“Una vez que has llegado al fin del mundo importa muy poco qué ruta tomaste.”

“Scary, isn't it? But what wonderful thing didn't start out scary?”

“I want to..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.”

“And they got blackout drunk one night and it just happened. It was basically an accident, and he gave me the most sincere and moving confession of all time, swore to God he loved me so much and would do anything to convince me, blah blah blah, but it didn’t matter, I kept thinking about it and running it through my head and just burning with it. I cried every night for weeks. Practically wore the binary off all my saddest Mp3s.”

“We realized that the closest we'd ever get to objective truth was the belief of the majority, so we enthroned the majority and ignored all other voices.”

“I remember what love was like before There were complex emotional and biological factors at work. We had elaborate tests to pass, connections to forge, ups and downs and tears and whirlwinds. It was an ordeal, an exercise in agony, but it was alive. The new love is simpler. Easier. But small.”

“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 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 of me.”

“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?”

“[...] assaporo la sensazione di quei piccoli simboli che si incastrano tra loro ed esplodono come bolle di sapone di suono [...]”

“I think I remember what love was like before. There were complex emotional and biological factors. We had elaborate tests to pass, connections to forge, ups and downs and tears and whirlwinds. It was an ordeal, an exercise in agony, but it was alive. The new love is simpler. Easier. But small.”

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

“Everything you see, you might be seeing for the last time.”

“Breathing is optional, but I need some air.”

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

“I miss my own and I mourn for everyone else's, because I'd like to love them, but I don't know who they are.”

“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.”

“once you reach the end of the world, it hardly matters which route you took”

“The world is always just what it is now, and it's up to you how you respond to it.”

“Peel off these dusty wool blankets of apathy and antipathy and cynical desiccation. I want life in all its stupid sticky rawness.”

“It’s not about keeping up the population, it’s about passing on who we are and what we've learned, so things keep going. So we don’t just end.”

“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.”

“Well we have to. We have to remember everything. If we don’t, by the time we grow up it’ll be gone forever.”

“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.”

“As she dampens my shirt with sadness and snot, I realize I'm about to do another thing I've never done before. I suck in air and attempt to sing. “You're . . . sensational . . . ,” I croak, struggling for a trace of Frank's melody. “Sensational . . . that's all.”There's a pause, and then something shifts in Julie's demeanor. I realize she's laughing.“Oh wow,” she giggles, and looks up at me, her eyes still glistening above a grin. “That was beautiful, R, really. You and Zombie Sinatra should record Duets III.”I cough. “Didn't get . . . warm-up.”

“Came to . . . see you.”“But I had to go home, remember? You were supposed to say good-bye.”“Don't know why you . . . say good-bye. I say . . . hello.”Her lip quivers between reactions, but she ends up with a reluctant smile. “God you're a cheeseball. But seriously, R—”

“I try to think of things to say but nothing comes, and if something did come I probably couldn’t say it. This is my great 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, everything collapses.”

“So when? You know things are moving. You’re changing, your fellow Dead are changing, the world is ready for something miraculous. What are we waiting for?”

“When the entire world is built on death and horror, when existence is a constant state of panic, it's hard to get worked up about any one thing. Specific fears have become irrelevant. We've replace them with a smothering blanket far worse.”

“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.”

“Believe that God discarded you if you want to, fate or destiny or whatever, but at least know they loved you...”