Station Eleven Major and Minor Quotes

“I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on earth.” (Ch. 8, Ch. 15, Ch. 39)

– Dr. Eleven

Analysis: This quote is spoken by Dr. Eleven and appears three times in the novel: first, in an early chapter when readers are introduced to Kirsten’s mysterious comics; then when Miranda first writes it while in her studio; then finally when Miranda shares the finished comic with Arthur years later, just two weeks before the collapse. The poignancy of the moment in the comic is mirrored by all that is lost in the world, though of course the characters reading it on the page—Miranda, Elizabeth, and Arthur—don’t know it yet. As Miranda dies, her memories of Station Eleven and all the imagery that she so lovingly created help make her death a peaceful one. In contrast, Elizabeth survives to live beyond the collapse, and she, more than most, is unable to forget. Instead of forgetting the sweetness of life before and building a new life, Elizabeth clings to her memories and her belief that everything happens for a reason.

Forgetting what has been lost is an ongoing theme throughout the novel. Kirsten does not remember much of her life before the collapse. She can remember looking out an airplane window at the lights below, but not her mother’s face. She can remember moments of Arthur’s death, but not the year she and her brother walked the road, a year where she evidently witnessed and experienced horrific violence. She considers this forgetting a gift that makes her life easier. At the same time, she often wonders about the children born after and the different ways communities deal with their history. She questions whether it is better to try and teach them all that has been lost or, like Dr. Eleven, to try and forget.

Despite Kirsten’s belief in the value of forgetting, she is committed to remembering all she can about Arthur and the Dr. Eleven comics, and when she and the Prophet are in confrontation and she is about to be killed, she quotes from Dr. Eleven, saying, “We long only to go home. We have been lost for so long. We long only for the world we were born into.” While the Prophet is unmoved, the young boy who travels with him is so overwhelmed that he shoots the Prophet, saving Kirsten’s life. Afterwards, Kirsten realizes that the Prophet was approximately her age, and quite possibly had the same horrors in his childhood, but that he might have “had the misfortune of remembering everything.”

“I spent a lot of time thinking about civilization. What it means and what I value in it. I remember thinking that I never wanted to see a war zone again, as long as I live. I still don’t. […] I think there’s just survival out there, Jeevan. I think you should go out there and try to survive.” (Ch. 32)

– Frank Chaudhary

Analysis: This is spoken by Frank, Jeevan’s brother, as they stay hidden in his apartment at the beginning of the collapse. Frank is in a wheelchair after being shot in a war zone as a foreign correspondent, and he is more clear-sighted than most of the characters about the frailty of civilization. As they watch the collapse, he reminds Jeevan that the electricity coming back on is not guaranteed, and unlike in action movies, an “after” where things get back to normal is not promised. Of course there is a version of “after,” but it is unimaginably different.

Frank’s statement to Jeevan plays with several of the main themes of the novel. Specifically, it addresses the question of what makes survival worthwhile, harkening to the quote on the Symphony caravan, “Survival is insufficient.” As discussed previously, the brutal post-collapse world takes its toll even on those who survive. Kirsten, who first appeared as a doll-like child actor, has to kill in self-defense, and while she doesn’t regret it, she says that she does not want to be remembered for those acts. The Prophet, of course, justifies all his atrocities through the filter of his religion; to him, survival has to mean something more than luck, so he fashions a reality wherein all the harm he does is the greater good.

This quote also touches on the issue of civilization and what makes a civilization. For Frank, a world with no civilization is a war zone, something he has already experienced. And readers learn that indeed, in the years after the collapse, the brutality and dangers were immense; Frank was probably correct in that it was not a world he wanted to live in. At the same time, civilization does start to emerge again, and an ‘after’ begins for the people who survived both the dangers and the psychological scars.

“People want what was best in the world.” (Ch. 7)

– Dieter

Analysis: This is spoken by Dieter, discussing why audiences preferred Shakespeare’s plays to more modern and presumably relevant theater. This quote ties into two of the major themes of the novel, art and civilization. Shakespeare’s King Lear, which he famously wrote during a plague, is being performed in the time right before the collapse, and rehearsed on the road by the Symphony 20 years later. Dieter is described as someone who found it difficult to stay in the present, and who, unlike Kirsten, remembers everything from his life before. In a scene shortly before he is abducted and accidentally killed by the Prophet, Dieter tells Kirsten that he has dreamed of an airplane, that he remembers them traveling across the sky, and in his dream he was so happy because it meant there was still a civilization somewhere.

This question of what matters, of what is best in the world, resonates with characters both before and after the collapse. At the beginning of the novel, after Arthur dies, his life is viewed by others as a series of failed marriages and often thoughtless choices. On that last day before he dies, Arthur evaluates his own behavior and what he values and plans to change his ways. Although he dies before he can enact any changes, and most of the rest of the world dies shortly after, his epiphany allows him to believe he can be better.

Similarly, Jeevan, who had been a paparazzo earlier in his career and had betrayed Miranda’s trust by selling a photo of her, rethinks what he values. Unlike Arthur, he has a chance to pursue this better world, even after the collapse. His character arc is one of the most satisfying, and he ends the novel in a post-collapse version of happily ever after.

“Jeevan was crushed by a sudden certainty that this was it, that this illness Hua was describing was going to be the divide between a before and an after, a line drawn through his life.” (Ch. 3)

“So this is how it ends, she thought, when the call was over, and she was soothed by the banality of it. You get a phone call in a foreign country, and just like that the man with whom you once thought you’d grow old has departed from this earth.[…]This was during the final month of the era when it was possible to press a series of buttons on a telephone and speak with someone on the far side of the earth.” (Ch. 5)

– Miranda Carroll

“Twenty years after the end of air travel, the caravans of the Traveling Symphony moved slowly under a white-hot sky.” (Ch. 7)

“The Symphony was insufferable, hell was other flutes or other people or whoever had used the last of the rosin or whoever missed the most rehearsals, but the truth was that the Symphony was their only home.” (Ch. 10)

“What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty. Twilight in the altered world, a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the parking lot in the mysteriously named St. Deborah by the Water, Lake Michigan shining a half a mile away.” (Ch. 11)

“The flu,” the Prophet said, “the great cleansing that we suffered twenty years ago, that was our flood. The light we carry within us is the ark that carried Noah and his people over the face of the terrible waters, and I submit that we were saved […] not only to bring the light, to spread the light, but to be the light. We were saved because we are the light. We are pure.” (Ch. 12)

– The Prophet

“If you’ve been on the road for that long,” the Prophet said, “if you’ve wandered all your life, as I have, through terrible chaos, if you remember, as I do, everything you’ve ever seen, then you know there’s more than one way to die. […] I am not speaking of the tedious variations of physical death. There’s the death of the body, and there’s the death of the soul.” (Ch. 12)

– The Prophet

“All I’m saying,” Dieter said […], “is that quote on the lead caravan would be way more profound if we hadn’t lifted it from Star Trek.” (Ch. 19)

“If you are the light, if your enemies are darkness, then there’s nothing that you cannot justify. There’s nothing you can’t survive, because there’s nothing that you will not do.” (Ch. 23)

– Kirsten Raymonde

“I’ve been thinking a lot about immortality. What it means to be remembered, what I want to be remembered for. […] First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.” (Ch. 34)

– Anonymous Philanthropist

“Doesn’t it seem to you that the people who have the hardest time in this—this current era, whatever you want to call it, the world after the Georgia flu—doesn’t it seem like the people who struggle the most with it are the people who remember the old world clearly? […] What I mean to say is, the more you remember, the more you’ve lost.” (Ch. 37)

– Kirsten Raymonde

“The maintenance of sanity required some recalibrations having to do with memory and sight. There were things Clark trained himself not to think about. Everyone he’d ever known outside the airport, for instance.” (Ch. 43)

“She saw the look on August’s face just afterward and realized that the gunman had been his first—he’d had the colossal good fortune to have made it to Year Twenty without killing anyone—and if she weren’t so tired, if it didn’t take all her strength to keep breathing in the face of Sayid’s terrible news, she could have told him what she knew: it is possible to survive this but not unaltered, and you will carry these men with you through all the nights of your life.” (Ch. 50)

– Kirsten Raymonde

“If only she could speak to August. We traveled so far and your friendship meant everything. It was very difficult, but there were moments of beauty. Everything ends. I am not afraid.” (Ch. 50)

– Kirsten Raymonde