David Vann Quotes & Sayings

That night longer than all my life before it. No scale or measure in this world can ever be held constant. We are always slipping. — David Vann

Anything is possible with a parent. Parents are gods. They make us and they destroy us. They warp the world and remake it in their own shape, and that's the world we know forever after. It's the only world. We can't see what it might have looked like otherwise. — David Vann

What would it feel like to be ravished by a god, to hold a deity. — David Vann

She has done this for Jason and will do more, she knows. Her brother dismembered at her feet. This is how the world begins. — David Vann

What's the point of sea horses? I asked.
The old man stood before them, mouth hung open, as if before his god. — David Vann

Origins...They don't explain us, you know. They never do. Each of us is our own piece of work. — David Vann

And only men could have invented the idea of a king. — David Vann

The worst part of childhood is not knowing that bad things pass, that time passes. A terrible moment in childhood hovers with s kind of eternity, unbearable. — David Vann

Medea is without words, without thought. She has unstrung the world, pulled some vital thread and unraveled all. Nothing to do now but hold her breath and find out whether a new world re-forms. — David Vann

If you look at something in the distance long enough, you eventually have to go there. — David Vann

A favored bit from "A Legend of Good Men"

"My mother and I each had our routines. She taught high school, took long hikes in the state parks near our house, read mystery novels, and sometimes disappeared with explanations as thin as, "I just need a few days," or "I'm going to visit a friend."
"Which friend?" I would ask.
"That's right," she would say. — David Vann

History...to stand in a place and know that this where you come from for a dozen generations or maybe a hundred generations or maybe more. To know there was a great city two thousand years ago in this place, and that your ancestors helped build it and lived there and worked there. When you walk down a small road, all the others who are walking there with you from before. — David Vann

As if somewhere there's the shape of my life, and I had the chance to choose a few variations, but not far from the pattern.I remember he said that, because I've thought of it ever since, the idea that we don't stray far, that what feels like discovery is only the revealing of what was hidden but there, waiting. — David Vann

I've thought of it ever since, the idea that we don't stray far, that what feels like discovery is only the revealing of what was hidden but there, waiting. I remember because I think this might be a path to forgiveness, to realize that no matter how violent, how frightening my mother was, it was not random but at least partly inescapable, that who she was had been set in motion long before and she had to suffer that person as much as I did. — David Vann

Born to destroy kings, born to reshape the world, born to horrify and break and remake, born to endure and never be erased. Hekate Medea, more than god and more than woman, alive now, in the time of origin. — David Vann

The dead reaching for us, needing us, but this isn't true. There's only us reaching for them, trying to find ourselves. — David Vann

Because you can choose who you'll be with, but you can't choose who they'll become. — David Vann

I thought that was a wonderful idea, that one could be on hell without being in it, like "Just Visiting" on the Monopoly board. — David Vann

Each one a little bit different but following some blueprint somewhere. As if each of us might have a blueprint. As if somewhere there's the shape of my life, and I had the chance to choose a few variations, but not far from the pattern. — David Vann

The point was the struggle. The earth thickened here so that he would labor. The shovel felt heavy so that he could feel he was doing something. The world provided resistance, and as we struggled through, we learned our final lessons. — David Vann

This is what I've always loved about a city, all the worlds hidden away inside, largest of aquariums. — David Vann

She had made him into a kind of husband,her own son. — David Vann

the best choice we have on the menu tonight. — David Vann

Low branches, dead and snapping against us. On the lookout for rattlesnakes. But the path was short enough, and soon we were on a kind of terrace. Old lawn overgrown by grass and weed, old concrete cracked in discrete chunks, vast areas overrun. An enchanted place for me, and only for me, because I was too young to remember, and so in my mind this place could become more. — David Vann

That's true. It doesn't make any sense. Welcome to the adult world, coming soon. I work so I can work more. I try not to want anything so maybe I'll get something. I starve so I can be less and more. I try to be free so I can be alone. And there's no point to any of it. They left out that part. — David Vann

Cutting through layers,this labor like cutting through the illusion of self to find there was no core, only the layers. — David Vann

There can be no god without desire. — David Vann

This table felt extremely dangerous. He understood now that what held his family together was violence. — David Vann

What would the world be like if men never ruled again? — David Vann

He hadn't yet seen his life wasted, hadn't yet understood the pure longing for what was really a kind of annihilation. A desire to see what the world can do, to see what you can endure, to see, finally, what you're made of as you're torn apart. A kind of bliss to annihilation, to being wiped away. "But ever he has longing, he who sets out on the sea", and this longing is to face the very worst, a delicate hope for a larger wave. — David Vann

If it had lips, we'd feel closer to it. All we need are eyes and lips, apparently, and we think we can say hello. I don't think I realized that before, how much we need the world to look like us. — David Vann

What myth can hold when you kneel in your brother's remains? When you slit his throat yourself? What story can guide us if we can betray all? — David Vann

Even now, I still believe metamorphosis is the greatest beauty. — David Vann

Each thing that happens to us, each and every thing, it leaves some dent, and that dent will always be there. Each of us is a walking wreck. — David Vann

Having something to look forward to changes everything. I've always needed a future. I can't live without one. — David Vann

Absurdity is all that makes grief bearable — David Vann

We live through evolution ourselves, each of us, progressing through different apprehensions of the world, at each age forgetting the last age, every previous mind erased. We no longer see the same world at all. — David Vann

A change in those moments, some switch turned off forever, the end of trust or safety or love, and how do we ever find the switch again? — David Vann

Maybe this is as near as we can come to forgiveness. Not the past wiped away, nothing undone, but some willingness in the present, some recognition and embrace and slowing down. — David Vann

One life can never know another's. — David Vann

Why can't any common fuck be king? — David Vann

Sleep, she said. Sleep while you can. Forget where you are and forget the mountain of days. Each one enormous, lost in some forest that never ends, but then the edge will fold back and you'll walk on what was the sky and is now only another forest floor, another layer, and you can feel the weight of hundreds of these layers above you. — David Vann

There must be at least one god not filled with rage. — David Vann

There are no gods, only men. — David Vann

We're not supposed to touch the dead. This is why we make a comfortable afterlife for them, so they will not reach out. We hope to distract them, keep them busy. Burial is a hope. — David Vann

If enough people repeat the stories for long enough, Jason will become something that cannot die, but he also will have been erased, because the actions are too large and impersonal. The stories will reveal nothing about the real man who lived. — David Vann