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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“It was fun, but it's over now. This is how things go.”

“I want life and in all its stupid sticky rawness.”

“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.”

“Sex, once a law as undisputed as gravity, has been disproved. The equation is erased, the blackboard broken”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“In my short life I made so many choices just because i thought they were required, but my dad was right: there's no rulebook 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 to.”

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

“The shadows in God's boarded-up basement.”

“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”

“Can we really choose anything?''Maybe. If we want to bad enough.”

“Zasmuca mnie jednak to, że zapomnieliśmy naszych imion. Już pomijając wszystko inne, to wydaje mi się najbardziej tragiczne. Tęsknie za swoim i opłakuję te należące do innych, ponieważ chciałbym ich kochać , a nie wiem, kim są.”

“I would like my life to be a movie so I could cut to a montage.”

“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”

“But we don’t remember those lives. We can’t read our diaries.’ ‘It doesn’t matter. We are where we are, however we got here. What matters is where we go next.’ ‘But can we choose that?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘We’re Dead. Can we really choose anything?’ ‘Maybe. If we want to bad enough.”

“I like how you remember things,’ I say. She looks at me. ‘Well, we have to. We have to remember everything. If we don’t, by the time we grow up it’ll be gone for ever.”

“I can’t seem to make myself care about anything to the right or left of the present.”

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

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

“Everything dies eventually. We all know that. People, cities, whole civilizations. Nothing lasts. So if existence was just binary, dead or alive, here or not here, what would be the fucking point in anything? 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.”

“I don't want to hear music, I don't want the sunrise to be pink. The world is a liar. Its ugliness is overwhelming; the scraps of beauty make it worse.”

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

“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.”

“Even in my bravest moment, I am a coward.”

“One mistake, one brief lapse of my new found judgement-that's all it took to unravel everything. What a massive responsibility, being a moral creature.”

“She is everything. And if she is everything, maybe that's answer enough.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The moment the light went out, everyone stopped pretending.”

“... 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.”

“...thinking all this maximalism would somehow generate happiness?”

“God has made us study partner. We need to talk about our project.”

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

“No praise, no blame. Just so.”

“Memories you capture on purpose are always more vivid than the ones you pick up by accident.”

“I feel the flatline of my existence disrupting, forming heartbeat hills and valleys”

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

“Last winter, when so many Living joined the Dead and our prey became scarce, I watched some of my friends become full-dead. The transition was undramatic. They just slowed down, then stopped, and after a while I realised they were corpses. It disquieted me at first, but it’s against etiquette to notice when one of us dies. I distracted myself with some groaning.”

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

“We will cry and bleed and lust and love, and we will cure death. We will be the cure. Because we want it.”

“It’s sad to see them staring wistfully through the window when the door isn’t locked.”

“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.”

“Are my words ever actually audible, or do they just echo in my head while people stare at me, waiting? I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I’m drowning in ellipses.”

“I don't know... there's something kind of beautiful about it, don't you think? That we keep living and growing even though our world is a corpse? That we keep coming back no matter how many of us die?”