Sea of Tranquility Quotes

“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

“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

“When I wasn’t playing my violin in the airship terminal I liked to walk my dog in the streets between the towers. In those streets everyone moved faster than me, but what they didn’t know was that I had already moved too fast, too far, and wished to travel no further. I’ve been thinking a great deal about time and motion lately, about being a still point in the ceaseless rush.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“The prairies are initially interesting, then tedious, then unsettling. There’s too much of them, that’s the problem. The scale is wrong. The train crawls like a millipede through endless grass. He can see from horizon to horizon. He feels terribly overexposed.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“He makes a careful inventory of his thoughts and decides that he isn’t unhappy. He just desires no further movement, for the time being. If there’s pleasure in action, there’s peace in stillness”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“Pandemics don’t approach like wars, with the distant thud of artillery growing louder every day and flashes of bombs on the horizon. They arrive in retrospect, essentially. It’s disorienting. The pandemic is far away and then it’s all around you, with seemingly no intermediate step.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“Maybe you’re right. Turns out reality is more important than we thought,” Dion said.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“We knew it was coming and we were breezy about it.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“Your parents bring you into this world, and then they move on without you and leave you behind. I know that that's the natural order of things, Z., and yet the pain of that whole arrangement is incredible, isn't it? We're all staggering around brokenhearted. By "arrangement" I mean "mortality", I guess. The grief fades with time but we stay abandoned.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“My personal belief is that we turn to post apocalyptic fiction not because we’re drawn to disaster, per se, but because we’re drawn to what we imagine might come next. We long secretly for a world with less technology in it.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“If there's pleasure in action, there's peace in stillness.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“Sometimes you don’t know you’re going to throw a grenade until you’ve already pulled the pin.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“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.” In”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“Edwin’s gaze drifted away from the man’s face, to the mild decrepitude of the September garden. The salvias were bare now, for the most part, brown stalks and dried leaves, a few last blooms wisping blue and violet in the failing light. He was struck by an understanding of what his life could be from this moment: he could live here quietly, and care for the garden, and that might eventually be enough.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“Illness frightens us because it’s chaotic. There’s an awful randomness about it.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“He was utterly unnerved by the crowd. They were shaking hands, which even after all of his cultural-sensitivity training seemed like a bizarre thing to do in flu season, and kissing one another on the cheek. These people have no direct experience of pandemics, he reminded himself. None of them were old enough to remember the winter of 1918–1919; Ebola was a few years out and would mostly be confined to the other side of the Atlantic; Covid-19 would not arrive for another thirteen years”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“My secret is, I hate people, the woman said, very sincerely, and for the first time Mirella liked her. All people? All except maybe like three, she said.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“(We were still thinking in terms of getting work done. The most shocking thing in retrospect was the degree to which all of us completely missed the point.)”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“Wait,” I said, “my cat’s from another century?” “Your cat’s from 1985,” she said. “What,” I said, at a loss for words.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“You don’t have to be a terrible person to intentionally try to change the time line. You just have to have a moment of weakness. Really just a moment. When I say weakness, I might mean something more like humanity.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“She never dwelt on my lapses, and I couldn’t entirely parse why this made me feel so awful. There’s a low-level, specific pain in having to accept that putting up with you requires a certain generosity of spirit in your loved ones.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“I don't know what I was thinking," said Edwin. "Actually, no, that's not true. I do know. I am absolutely certain there was not a single thought in my head. It was like a kind of void.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“So we don’t own the building,” the director said, “but we hold a ten-thousand-year lease on the space.” “You’re right. That’s magnificent.” “Nineteenth-century hubris. Imagine thinking civilization would still exist in ten thousand years. But there’s more.” She leaned forward, paused for effect. “The lease is renewable.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“Forgive me,” Olive said, “I fear there’s a problem with my translator bot. I thought you said he was kind to care for his own child.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“There were several magnificent years of money and travel and then the lights went out.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“Getting lost is death, he can see that. No, this whole place is death. No, that’s unfair—this place isn’t death, this place is indifference. This place is utterly neutral on the question of whether he lives or dies; it doesn’t care about his last name or where he went to school; it hasn’t even noticed him. He feels somewhat deranged.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“It was difficult to be alive in the world”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“You write a book with a fictional tattoo and then the tattoo becomes real in the world and after that almost anything seems possible. She'd seen five of those tattoos, but that didn't make it less extraordinary, seeing the way fiction can bleed into the world and leave a mark on someone's skin.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“I’ve always loved rain, and knowing that it isn’t coming from clouds doesn’t make me love it less.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility