#sffbookclub

Someone said that people don’t really want to date other people. They don’t really want equal partnership—you know, two full people in a relationship. Two people with demands and desires and differences of opinion about everything. What they want is one-point-five people in the relationship. They want to be the complete one, the person who controls the relationship—and they want the other person to be half a person. You know, someone who gets them, but who doesn’t have their own demands. Someone who appears complete, with all these personality quirks and their own opinions and stories about the world—but not in an annoying way. Not in a way that would demand you change.

— The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

The world still contains miracles, despite everything that has been done to it.

— The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

The great and terrible thing about humankind is simply this: we will always do what we are capable of.

— The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

The plastic awning of the café streamed with rain.

— The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

The portable surgery unit hulked at the edge of a tract field, ringed by four-byfours and a lone Jeep.

— Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo

Dying has gotten to be quite expensive.

— Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, Angela Rodel

So tell me, he started in . . . is Denmark still a prison?

— Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, Angela Rodel

Death, you’ll say, yes, of course, death is his brother, but old age is the monster.

— Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, Angela Rodel

Without being able to formulate it clearly, he senses that if no one remembers, then everything is permissible.

— Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, Angela Rodel

There is no time machine except the human being.

— Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, Angela Rodel