In Ascension Quotes

“The silence that surrounds us, the un-meaning of deep space. Terrifying, endless directionless plane. It wasn't possible to domesticate and cultivate this non-place.”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“Everyone should be acknowledged. Everyone should be missed when they are not right there with you because of what they carry, this very distinct way they have of bearing themselves that is like no one else and that is built by everything they have done and everything they have seen.”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“A family is a group of strangers with a destructive desire for common nostalgia”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“I questioned what else I had already missed so far, in my own life, simply through the limits of my character.”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“Galaxy' comes from the Ancient Greek for milk. People looked at the density of stars and saw birth, maternal sustenance scattered across the sky.”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“You’re flawed, and the world you see corresponds to these flaws. Weaknesses define you, drive new and original strategies to cover them, and they make you who you are. You don’t exist without them.”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“as the stars were like punctures through darkness the vents such as the Atlantic crater and the Mariana Trench were similar holes cut in Earth's crust, the light of distant stars and the light of Earth's furnace, contrasting indications of a generally hidden illumination.”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“I reasoned that if a message couldn’t reach me, its potential content could never be realised.”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“Helena was taking responsibility for our mother. She was the true older sibling, with a courage and grit I’d never come close to. She didn’t get overwhelmed. She dealt with things, she took responsibility. And I never felt younger, or more inadequate, than when I saw her showing such courage.”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“In my mind, the world is not reasonable, and can never be made reasonable. It is much more interesting than that.”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“Objects creating themselves in a frenzy of feeling, striving not to end, briefly distinct from what surrounds them before coming apart again.”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“Once he had committed to this life, there was no way he could get out of it. He was angry at us, his daughters, because the financial demands of our existence bound him to it.”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“family is a group of strangers with a destructive desire for common nostalgia.”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“really knew what we were doing here,”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“As soon as the train pulled away I felt the first pangs of regret - already the experience was trailing behind and I hadn't savoured it, hadn't captured it as I should have, as I'd promised myself I would the night before. [...] As we stepped reluctantly back onto the departing early-evening train, I was possessed by an unbearably bittersweet awareness of the preciousness of each moment passing, each moment that would never be retrieved. Even at the peak of it, the two of us quietly eating our sandwiches on the lawn on a plaid blanket, I couldn't lose the sense that this was ending, that the more the experience developed, the more I lost it. The closer it got, the quicker it fled.”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“The air was thick with teeming life, just as the oceans and the rivers were. A spoonful of seawater or a pinch of soil between your fingers held billions of living things. We were blind to this out of necessity, because if we saw what was really there we would never move. It was around us, between us, on the edge of us and inside us. It coated our bodies and we released waves of it when we breathed and spoke. It was in every skin cell and in the eyelashes that fluttered when we dreamed. It adapted to ever aspect of our behavior; if animals were shaded out, and microorganisms illuminated, then our ghosts would be clear in these bright peripheries.”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“I kind of love it. It's so macabre. The reason we haven't seen or heard from anything off-world is that reaching off-world status is a civilisational death knell. Life either gets stuck there or destroyed there. It still doesn't really explain anything though - we can't see anyone because it's impossible to see anyone. It's circular. It doesn't say why becoming space proficient dooms us.”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension