Alden Bell Quotes

He was here once before but that was in a different lifetime, when wonders were rare and announced - like amusement parks or school trips.
Now they are everywhere, for the delectation of those among the survivors who might be hunters of miracles.
And the beauty he looks over is fathomable only by a girl who would have felt the measure of it as deep as to her dazzled soul.

I think maybe I was just waitin on the apocalypse so I would have something to occupy me.

Some people, he says, they hide themselves away from the eyes of the world. They hunker down and shiver. They find four walls high enough to put between them and everything else. Those people, to them the world is a frightful place. See, you and me, we're different. When we are called on to move, we move. It don't matter the cause or the distance. Revenge or ministration, reason or folly - it's all the same to us.

The abundance of small things, it'll bury you.

Words have the power to make things true if they're said right.

Dying is Easy , its Living that's hard

It has become something to her, that memory - something she can take out in dismal times and stare into like a crystal ball disclosing not presages but reminders. She holds it in her palm like a captured ladybug and thinks, Well ain't I been some places, ain't I partook in some glorious happenings wanderin my way between heaven and earth. And if I ain't seen everything there is to see, it wasn't for lack of lookin.
Blind is the real dead.

Evil's a thing of the mind. We humans got the full measure of it ourselves.
Is that right? Are you evil, Sarah Mary?
I ain't good.

I bet I got places to go that I don't even know exist yet.

It makes people feel good to build somethin big. Makes people feel like they're makin progress, I reckon.
Progress toward what?
It doesn't matter. Up higher or down deeper or out farther. As long as you're movin, it don't matter much where you're goin or what's chasin you. That's why they call it progress. It keeps goin of it's own accord.

Pushing through some viney branches, she comes into a clearing andfinds a sight that makes her hush
and not just her voice but every part of her, like feeling silence in her deep guts ...
It's something she can feel in the back of her throat, her dislike of the scene
as though what she's looking upon is unholy, the conjunction of chaos and order in a forced fit where everything is stretched and bent in the wrong way like those baby legs.

You Griersons are a touchy bunch. One minute it's biscuits and model ships and the next minute it's outrage and horror.

But still and all, you can cherish a miracle without deserving one. We're all of us beholden to the beauty of the world, even the bad ones of us. Maybe the bad ones most of all.

She wonders how people can live this kind of life - trapped inside a house with windows everywhere showing you where else you could be.

She tells of moments when she would forget, when her own simmering evil would seem to dissipate and let through the clear spectacle of life. One had to be careful of those moments, because they were fleeting and intended not for her but instead for the delectation of other children of God. Or, if they were meant for her, they could break her heart as easily as mend it ...

She's done things that mark her forever, as good as a brand on her forehead - and her denial of them would be fruitless. It would be vanity.

[Zombies] don't bother much as long as you can stay out from between their teeth.

What I mean is I done some things I don't care to talk about. Little sister, anyone alive's got a collection of those things. Maybe so, but it's one thing to feel like there's a few rotten things knocking around inside you like some beans in a can. But it's another thing to feel like those things are what your heart and stomach and brain are built out of.

He looks again at the face of the little girl. He wonders where she went, that little firecracker life, that smoldering, spitting, whizgig of a girl. He wonders if he can tell from the expression on her face where she's gone to.
And he smiles because he can.
The angels would want her sure.

Sometimes you gotta bust apart to get yourself put back together.

They belong, Temple thinks. They have the stink of belonging wherever they go. This world is their world, and they take possession of every yard they cover, and they run the sun to its grave every night.

God is a slick god. Temple Knows. She knows because of all the crackerjack miracles still to be seen on this ruined globe.

The world, it treats you kind enough so long as you're not fightin against it.

It don't matter, she says. It just comes from thinkin too much. That's why you can't slow down for long. You gotta keep your brain tired out so it don't start searching for things to dwell on.

A noisy parade of memories that frustrate her because of the way they play themselves out. These memories-it feels like she's back there in the moment, like she has the moment to do over and make different choices than she made. But she can't, because they're just memories and they're set down permanent as if they were chiseled in marble, and so she just has to watch herself do the same things over and over and it's a condemnation if it's anything.

Your life ain't a target for the world to shoot at. The world is a target for your life to shoot at.

There are some things she doesn't like to think about because thinking about them takes up every part of her mind and body.

You somehow make it outta here and track me down, you best come with a furious rage
because I got no use for your sympathy.

Honey, she says, honest ain't the half of what I'm not.

He looks like someone who could slap you or kiss you and you wouldn't be able to tell which one is coming and it would mean the same thing either way.

Niagara. Used to be a place honeymooners would go. Maybe you seen some movies. All this water, pouring over the cliffs, a thousand rivers falling down all at once, like somehow there was a mistake in the crust of the earth and someone had taken away half of a lakebed. And the force of it, water against water, so strong you can feel the spray on your cheeks a half a mile distant. I never seen anything like it. See, that's the kind of thing that just keeps on going, century after century, no matter what us puny humans are doin all a-scurry over the surface of the earth.

A nomad with many more wildernesses to explore – and it is so much easier to travel away from things than towards them. But it's the words that are a curse – because he cannot utter a simple goodbye.

It's one of the happy things about a world gone so wrong: your personal freakishness don't stand out so much.

Stories that pander to your every readerly desire and whim are like overly loyal dogs that live for the simple glow of your approval. I'm a cat person. I like a little aloofness in my pets and my writing.

She thinks of James Grierson. His Kisses tasted like whiskey, and they landed right and true.