No,' Dahlia said, 'because I think people like him think work is supposed to be drudgery punctuated by very occasional moments of happiness, but when I say happiness, I mostly mean distraction. You know what I mean?'' No, please elaborate.'' Okay, say you go into the break room,' she said, 'and a couple of people you like are there, say someone's telling a funny story, you laugh a little, you feel included, everyone's so funny, you go back to your desk with a sort of, I don't know, I guess afterglow would be the word? You go back to your desk with an afterglow, but then by four or five o'clock the day's just turned into yet another day, and you go on like that, looking forward to five o'clock and then the weekend and then your two or three annual weeks of paid vacation time, day in day out, and that's what happens to your life.

— Emily St. John Mandel

Of course,” the cabbies aid, “you don’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’re going.

— Emily St. John Mandel

People want what was best about the world.

— Emily St. John Mandel

She knows there are traps everywhere that can make her cry, she knows the way she dies a little every time someone asks her for change, and she doesn't give it to them means that she's too soft for this world or perhaps just for this city, she feels so small here.

— Emily St. John Mandel

She liked books, but the hours spent in small-town libraries were tedious, and she began the first list when she was eight or nine as a means of distraction. A list of names, eventually expanding to ten or twelve pages: Lilia, Gabriel, Anna, Michelle. In every town her name was different.

— Emily St. John Mandel

She works on her never-ending project for hours at a time. In art school they talked about day jobs in tones of horror. She never would have imagined that her day job would be the calmest and least cluttered part of her life.

— Emily St. John Mandel

The beauty of this world where almost everyone was gone. If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it?

— Emily St. John Mandel

The beauty of this world where almost everyone was gone. If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it? Perhaps soon humanity would simply flicker out, but Kirsten found this thought more peaceful than sad. So many species had appeared and later vanished from this earth; what was one more? How many people were even left now?

— Emily St. John Mandel

The king stood in a pool of blue light, unmoored.

— Emily St. John Mandel

The more we know about the former world, the better we’ll understand what happened when it fell.

— Emily St. John Mandel