Cloud Atlas: A Novel

“An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.”

Knew I’d never see my twenty-fifth birthday. Am early for once. The lovelorn, the cry-for-helpers, all mawkish tragedians who give suicide a bad name are the idiots who rush it, like amateur conductors. A true suicide is a paced, disciplined certainty. People pontificate, “Suicide is selfishness.” Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and c

I wondered where’d my tribesmen’s souls be reborned now Valleyswomen’d not be bearin’ babbits here. I wished Abbess was there to teach me, ’cos I cudn’t say an’ nor could Meronym. We Prescients, she answered, after a beat, b’lief when you die you die an’ there ain’t no comin’ back. But what ’bout your soul? I asked. Prescients don’t b’lief souls ex

The forest left as abruptly as it had arrived, and the topography grew hillier.

Poor England. Too much history for its acreage. Years grow inwards here, like my toenails.

People are obscenities. Would rather be music than be a mass of tubes squeezing semisolids around itself for a few decades before becoming so dribblesome it’ll no longer function.

only then did I ’fess to Meronym what I’d done back to that sleepin’ sentry. I don’t know why it is, but secrets jus’ rot you like teeth if you don’t yank ’em out. She just list’ned, yay, an’ she din’t judge me none.

Cruelty has never made me smile.

How did they impose hierarchy?