“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 Copy Share Image
“What if everything was unfinished? What if everything was made incomplete?” — David Vann Copy Share Image
“When I went to sleep each night, I imagined myself at the bottom, thousands of feet down, the weight of all that water but… — David Vann Copy Share Image
“A city holds all that we want and a million times what we don't want.” — David Vann Copy Share Image
“A favored bit from "A Legend of Good Men" "My mother and I each had our routines. She taught high school, took long hikes… — David Vann Copy Share Image
“This table felt extremely dangerous. He understood now that what held his family together was violence.” — David Vann Copy Share Image
“What do we owe for what has come before us, the previous generation?... The problem is that we can never enter this shadow world… — David Vann Copy Share Image
“WE THINK OF CAIN AS THE ONE WHO KILLED HIS BROTHER, but who else was around to kill? They were the first two born.… — David Vann Copy Share Image
“That night longer than all my life before it. No scale or measure in this world can ever be held constant. We are always… — David Vann Copy Share Image
“One night becomes sixty nights. This is the price of hiding. Just hold your breath for one minute and find out what a minute… — David Vann Copy Share Image
“The point was the struggle. The earth thickened here so that he would labor. The shovel felt heavy so that he could feel he… — David Vann Copy Share Image
“The entire legacy of humanity will be only one thing, a line of red goop in the paleo-oceanographic record, a time of no calcium… — David Vann Copy Share Image
