Night Vale Quotes

Fear is a reasonable response to life.

She understood the world and her place in it. She understood nothing. The world and her place in it were nothing and she understood that.

Remember that misuse of language can lead to miscommunication, and that miscommunication leads to everything that has ever happened in the whole of the world.

People are beautiful when they do beautiful things.

Comfort was the answer to all life's problems. It didn't solve them, but it made them more distant for a bit as they quietly worsened.

It was a fair question, although the problem with fair questions is that they are asked about an unfair world.

The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first and settles in as the gentle present.

She was angry, which is the more productive cousin of fear.

Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right question. The question is are we living a life that is worth the harm?

She left the shower as most people leave showers, clean and a little lonely.

The search for truth takes us to dangerous places,” said Old Woman Josie. “Often it takes us to that most dangerous place: the library. You know who said that? No? George Washington did. Minutes before librarians ate him.

Sleep is confusing. Dreams are baffling. The concept of transitioning from one perceived reality to another is a tolerated madness.

People who grow older think they are so wise, she thought. Like time means anything at all.

In other news, a recent report suggests that things may not be as they seem.

There is nothing more lonely than an action taken quietly on your own, and nothing more comforting than doing that same quiet action in parallel with fellow humans doing the same action, everyone alone next to each other.

Librarians are hideous creatures of unimaginable power. And even if you could imagine their power, it would be illegal. It is absolutely illegal to even try to picture what such a being would be like.

She was not shy, but maybe lazy socially. Not willing to seek out situations and connections that were not already part of her routine.

Almost always we are all experiencing the same problems as everyone else,” said Josie, “and pretending we don’t so that every one of us thinks we are alone.

In terms of tacos, she was doing fine.

You say your life is unraveling. Your life cannot unravel. Your life is your life. You haven't lost it. It's just different now

Sometimes it is easy to forget which things in the world can feel pain and which cannot.

We understand the lights. We understand the lights above the Arby’s. We understand so much. But the sky behind those lights, mostly void, partially stars, that sky reminds us: We don’t understand even more.

Sleep heavily and know that I am here with you now. The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first and settles in as the gentle present. This now, this us? We can cope with that. We can do this together. You and I, drowsily, but comfortably.

Clocks and calendars don’t work in Night Vale. Time itself doesn’t work.

Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.

there’s no sense in going through life presuming awful things about people you do not know.

To be remembered is, I think, a basic human right. Not one that occurs to a person when it is there, but like a parched throat in a desert when it is gone.

Desperation does not breed empathy or clear thinking.

It's not other people that hurt us, but what we feel about them

We are skipping Friday this week, but we’ll make up for it by having Double Friday next week. Mark your schedules.

The present tense of regret is indecision.

But babies become children, and they go to elementary schools that indoctrinate them on how to overthrow governments, and they get interested in boys and girls, or they don't, and anyway they change.

She didn’t have a good reason for most of what she did. Mostly, she went by what seemed right in the moment, and justified it to herself later, and in this way she was no different than anyone else she knew.

It was a simpler time. Because I personally had less memories and so less to superimpose upon the world, and so it was much clearer, and also I was younger. Thus, the world was simpler.

This is Night Vale. Our mayor once led an army of masked warriors from another dimension through magic doors to defeat an army of smiling blood-covered office workers. There is definitely, definitely another way.

Most people in Night Vale get by with a cobbled-together framework of lies and assumptions and conspiracy theories.

Remember: if you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget.

Sometimes it's okay to find something beautiful without correctly understanding it.

I don’t know who I am and I don’t understand the progression of time as it relates to me,” said Jackie. Leann nodded. “We’ve all been there.

We live in a pattern that we'll never detect, and that will shuffle us through invisible hierarchies to the actual death of us.

There's a monster at the end of this book. It's the blank page where the story ends and you're left alone with yourself and your thoughts.

Whisper a dangerous secret to someone you care about. Now they have the power to destroy you, but they won't. This is what love is.

I’m not afraid,” she declared, and she wasn’t. She was angry, which is the more productive cousin of fear.

Her body no longer felt young. All of her energy had been robbed from her. She felt old, looked young, was neither.

Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right question. The question is: Are we living a life that is worth the harm?

Some people prefer to make their homes so neat that there is no evidence of life anywhere at all.

Troy and I loved each other. We called it 'unconditional love', which was true. Once conditions arose, the love dissipated.

You, of course, should always chant when you wash your hands. It is only hygienic.

I'm sorry that it was this way, Mom. Not sorry like an apology. I'm sorry as in sorrow.

And now a brief public service announcement. Alligators: can they kill your children? Yes.

One day we will destroy the moon with indifference!

If we cannot be judged on our actions, then we cannot be judged.

Sometimes you go through things that seem huge at the time, like a mysterious glowing cloud devouring your entire community. While they're happening, they feel like the only thing that matters and you can hardly imagine that there's a world out there that might have anything else going on. And then the glow cloud moves on. And you move on. And the event is behind you. And you may find, as time passes, that you remember it less and less. Or absolutely not at all, in my case.

Science was meant to be hard. After all, what was science but a bunch of bored human beings trying to challenge themselves when faith became too easy

You believe in mountains, right? Not everyone does.

Pepsi: Drink Coke.

Of course, angels do not exist. It is illegal to consider their existence, or even to give them a dollar when they forget bus money and start hovering around the Ralphs asking for change.

Silence is golden. Words are vibrations. Thoughts are magic.

Some days the weather happens and we never look up or go outside and that’s okay too.

It’s nice to have a station pet. Wish it wasn’t trapped in a hovering prison in the men’s bathroom, but listen: no pet is perfect. It becomes perfect when you learn to accept it for what it is.

but what are people but deaths that haven’t happened yet?

The Night Vale PTA released a statement today saying that if the School Board could not promise to prevent children from learning about dangerous activities like drug use and library science during recess periods, they would be blocking all school entrances with their bodies. They pulled hundreds of bodies out from trucks, saying, “We own all of these bodies and we will not hesitate to use them to create great flesh barricades if that is what it takes to prevent our children from learning.

Everything I do is for a reason. And I don't know what that reason is. Everything I do is for a reason, and I know none of them. Everything makes sense, and the sense is hidden from me.

You're a good one, Jackie Fierro," they said. "And that makes the world a dangerous place for you.

Like any reasonable human, I do not like harming innocent people, but like any reasonable human, I do not consider the wealthy to be innocent people.

It would be safe to assume that the house is an enclosed structure owned and built by people. It would be weird to assume that the house has a personality, a soul. Why would anyone assume that? It is true. It does. But that was weird to assume that. Never assume that kind of thing.

He was not so arrogant as to refer to his own death as The End, just one of billions of ends before The End. Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.

It is a terrible, terrible beauty that I do not understand.

The desert seems vast, even endless. And yet scientists tell us that somewhere, even now, there is snow.

Not everybody gets to be friends with everybody.

She loved him the way one loves an old bridge or a wool sweater or the sound of a growing tulip.

Imagine a fifteen-year-old boy. Nope. That was not right at all. Try again.

The moon’s weird though, right? It’s there, and there, and then suddenly it’s not. And it seems to be pretty far up. Is it watching us? If not, what is it watching instead? Is there something more interesting than us? Hey, watch us moon! We may not always be the best show in the universe, but we try.

Perfection is not real. Perfection is not human. Carlos is not perfect- no, even better- he is imperfect. Everything about him, and us, and all of this is imperfect. And those imperfections in our reality are the seams and cracks into which our outsized love can seep and pool.

All the beauty in the world was made within the oppressive limitations of time and death and impermanence.

The tarantula stared at the ceiling not knowing at all what a ceiling is.

There are a lot of things we don’t understand about orange juice, the house thought.

Parents sometimes show love through velocity.

We are not history yet. We are happening now. How miraculous is that?

Diane was gasping and slowing, cursing years of intended workouts that had never happened.

When nothing else works, eating sure does.

Everyone in this town is frightening and friendly and kind and awful. But everyone everywhere is.

Anyone moderately familiar with the rigours of composition will not need to be told the story in detail; how he wrote and it seemed good; read and it seemed vile; corrected and tore up; cut out; put in; was in ecstasy; in despair; had his good nights and bad mornings; snatched at ideas and lost them; saw his book plain before him and it vanished; acted people's parts as he ate; mouthed them as he walked; now cried; now laughed; vacillated between this style and that; now preferred the heroic and pompous; next the plain and simple; now the vales of Tempe; then the fields of Kent or Cornwall; and could not decide whether he was the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world.

Wednesday is Smell Like a Pirate Day. Everyone in town is encouraged to get in on the wacky fun by not bathing for weeks and rubbing yourself with ash and blood.

Finally, most identity thefts occur when databases are not securely managed. So, my advice? Don’t ever end up in a database.

Then you will die, but only for a little while.

Don’t worry. Don’t worry. All is as it was meant to be. It was meant to be lonely and terrifying and unfair and fleeting. Don’t worry.

Mostly we don’t get destroyed,” John said. “Mostly we destroy ourselves.” Another

At your smallest components, you are indistinguishable from a forest fire.

Get out to Lenny’s for their big grand opening sale. Find eight government secrets and get a free kidnapping and personality reassignment so that you’ll forget you found them!

As the old saying went: “Not all windowless vans have residential surveillance equipment.

The reading area was a beautifully crafted trap set by the librarians, but it was too perfect. Even the dumbest book lover—and anyone who would regularly choose to come in contact with books could not be a bright bulb, Jackie thought—wouldn’t fall for this.

Nothing there but a distant airplane crawling across the sky, red blinking lights, vulnerable in the vast empty, faint red beacons flashing the message HELLO. A SMALL ISLAND OF LIFE UP HERE, VERY CLOSE TO SPACE. PRAY FOR US. PRAY FOR US.

That’s a simplification. Just because something eventually doesn’t work out doesn’t mean it never worked out. It was working out fine until, not much later, it wasn’t working out at all. Happiness is not canceled out by unhappiness. A relationship is not canceled out by its end.

Diane, what does it mean when you know you’re feeling something but you don’t know what that feeling is?” Diane considered this seriously for a long time. “It means you’re growing older.” “I never grow older.” “I guess we all thought that once.

All this time he had lived for the future. The future had been the firm ground he stood on, and the present was only the slight haze in the air. But now he understood that the future was a joke without a punch line and that whatever he had in the present was what he would always have. He did not have much in the present.

We have nothing to speak about. There never was. Words are an unnecessary trouble. Expression is time wasting away. Any communication is just a yelp in the darkness. I am speaking now but I am saying nothing. I am just making noises, and, as it happens, they are organized in words and you should not draw meaning from this.

Time is like wax, dripping from a candle flame. In the moment, it is molten and falling, with the capability to transform into any shape. Then the moment passes, and the wax hits the tabletop, and solidifies into the shape it will always be. It becomes the past, a solid, single record of what happened, still holding in its wild curves and contours the potential of every shape it could have held. It is impossible, no matter how blessed you are by luck or the government or some remote, invisible deity gently steering your life with hands made of moonlight and wind, it is impossible not to feel a little sad looking at that bit of wax, that bit of the past. It is impossible not to think of all the wild forms that wax now will never take. ... ... But then you remember, I remember, that we are even now in another bit of molten wax. We are in a moment and it is still falling, still volatile, and we will never be anywhere else. We will always be in that most dangerous, most exciting, most possible time of all: the now, where we never can know what shape the next moment will take. Stay tune fore... well, let's just find out together, shall we?

[Robert's eulogy at his brother, Ebon C. Ingersoll's grave. Even the great orator Robert Ingersoll was choked up with tears at the memory of his beloved brother] The record of a generous life runs like a vine around the memory of our dead, and every sweet, unselfish act is now a perfumed flower. Dear Friends: I am going to do that which the dead oft promised he would do for me. The loved and loving brother, husband, father, friend, died where manhood's morning almost touches noon, and while the shadows still were falling toward the west. He had not passed on life's highway the stone that marks the highest point; but, being weary for a moment, he lay down by the wayside, and, using his burden for a pillow, fell into that dreamless sleep that kisses down his eyelids still. While yet in love with life and raptured with the world, he passed to silence and pathetic dust. Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing every sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant hear the billows roar above a sunken ship. For whether in mid sea or 'mong the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck at last must mark the end of each and all. And every life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love and every moment jeweled with a joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy as sad and deep and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death. This brave and tender man in every storm of life was oak and rock; but in the sunshine he was vine and flower. He was the friend of all heroic souls. He climbed the heights, and left all superstitions far below, while on his forehead fell the golden dawning, of the grander day. He loved the beautiful, and was with color, form, and music touched to tears. He sided with the weak, the poor, and wronged, and lovingly gave alms. With loyal heart and with the purest hands he faithfully discharged all public trusts. He was a worshipper of liberty, a friend of the oppressed. A thousand times I have heard him quote these words: 'For Justice all place a temple, and all season, summer!' He believed that happiness was the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest. He added to the sum of human joy; and were every one to whom he did some loving service to bring a blossom to his grave, he would sleep to-night beneath a wilderness of flowers. Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word; but in the night of death hope sees a star and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the approach of death for the return of health, whispered with his latest breath, 'I am better now.' Let us believe, in spite of doubts and dogmas, of fears and tears, that these dear words are true of all the countless dead. And now, to you, who have been chosen, from among the many men he loved, to do the last sad office for the dead, we give his sacred dust. Speech cannot contain our love. There was, there is, no gentler, stronger, manlier man.

To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;— Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature’s teachings, while from all around— Earth and her waters, and the depths of air— Comes a still voice— Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix for ever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. Yet not to thine eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings, The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,—the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods—rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,— Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom.—Take the wings Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, Save his own dashings—yet the dead are there: And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone. So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men, The youth in life’s green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man— Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those, who in their turn shall follow them. So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.