Stephen Snyder

Though I’ve tried, I’ve found no way to fill in the voids left by the Memory Police.

Tension and fear lingered in their bodies, leaving no room for other sensations.

It felt terrible that your fate depended on something as insignificant as the corner of a rug

How could I have so easily forgotten something I’d heard for so many years, a sound that had been silenced only for a fraction of that time?

But in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined. If my body were cut up in pieces and those pieces mixed with those of other bodies, and then if someone told me, “Find your left eye,” I suppose it would be difficult to do so.

When the voice that links the body to the soul vanishes, there is no way to put into words one’s feelings or will. I am reduced to pieces in no time at all.

floating in a pool where the sunlight never reaches

may think that the memories themselves vanish every time there’s a disappearance, but that’s not true. They’re just floating in a pool where the sunlight never reaches. All you have to do is plunge your hand in and you’re bound to find something. Something to bring back into the light. You have to try. I can’t just stand by watching as your soul withers

The moon and the stars were nowhere to be seen, as though they had been scattered by the brilliance of the flames, and only the corpses of burned books lit the sky.

the intense light and heat chased away all traces of the fear and sadness I had been feeling