Quackenbush Quotes

We do not require man's religion for salvation. We do not believe in anything that forces people to keep their places in this world. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

If you can't feel the touch of the gods on your own, it greatly behooves you to work on that before some lecher tells you his touch is just as good. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Modesty was hardly a priority in her mind until now. Now she had been cast from Hell and again knew shame. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I am not interested in wishing hard and having the Universe provide all I need without any work on my part. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Love could not save her from the bargains others had made. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

A woman steps out of the back door after an hour of him sitting. Younger than either of us, blonde with a tinge of gray at her temples, the light creases of age in the corners of her eyes, beautiful in the untouchable way of mothers who are our exemplars for what we will admire in women when we come of age. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

She harbored the childhood presumption that the truly scary things could only find her in the night. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Any relationship beyond acquaintanceship is composed of one to three qualities: passion, intimacy, and commitment. Simple friendship has one: intimacy. You can have other friends and you do not feel passionately about one another, or we are dealing with another animal. Most romantic relationships begin with a dollop of passion, often to the exclusion of anything else. The person in your arms is the best in the world, though you barely know him or her. You have never felt this way. Any gaps or deficits are temporarily puttied over by passion. When most people envision romantic love, this is where they stop. Romantic comedies but only rarely deal with washing your lover's dishes because they must be up early for work. No one wants to see the mundane when they can flip the channel to a desperate, emotionally-stunted frottage. The passion of infatuation triggers the release of addictive chemicals. We would rather get another hit than cope with the relative dullness of intimacy and commitment. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Having had a transcendental experience as a teenager with the assistance of a hallucinogen, Madeline remains certain that the universe is too vast and beautiful to bother with gods. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

He wouldn't be the one to prove to the world that there was an afterlife, but he hoped to be the one to prove it to himself, though he would have a few stern questions for a Creator who made people haunt libraries. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

As a man, I was a failure. A pathetic teacher lusting after Catholic school girls in short skirts. As a monster, I'm superb. It's comforting to know my place in the world. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

She knew the power of bureaucracy well enough to be aware she had to sit and be admonished until this stranger felt she had expressed sufficient disappointment in a girl she would never have to see again. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Instead of the birds of the sky and beast of the field, the gods were more than men because Man needed them to be, for what could the world be if Man were the best of all creatures? ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Her mother admonished through closed lips, the sound a mother can make mean anything from "pick up your socks" to "we are very disappointed you have murdered those orphans. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

We want our delusions and will violently defend these when confronted. We want to believe that the job that is slowly choking us is good, because the effort it would take to change is too terrifying to contemplate. We never want to hear how badly we are being treated in a relationship because we are strong and how dare you suggest we don't know better. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I have heard that Paganism is for broken people, but life cracks everyone in some way. We are a religion of healing people. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

The psycho-babble lavished on her by her mother in a prior life found her, whispering of trauma and coping, how this was not her fault and blaming herself at all was useless. She would eventually try to believe this, as soon as she was behind her locked bedroom door. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

People who believe their god loves them unconditionally are less able to be controlled through divine terrorism. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

[Epilepsy] gave her an adversity to fight against. It had shaped her personality, the need to be careful and secretive, and the ability to see things a bit differently from the neurotypical. She granted that this feeling of having a broken brain that required her to be sensitive, to look always inward to survive, might be why she turned artist. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Like the discovery of most things - love and religion especially - she maintained the child's arrogant wonder than no one had understood it before her and, even if they had, they could not embrace it as passionately as she. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Any divinity that can't see me as a good witch in street clothes has no business hanging up a shingle as a god. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

She could never understand why creatures of darkness had the slightest interest in spineless human girls. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

She was not the sort of woman guys settle for. She was the one they lust after and strive for. She was the one who ruins other people's relationships simply by existing, but she will always be surmounted as guys come to realize the virtues of the approachable girl next door. She was, in brief, too pretty to be trusted or had. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

We are given these niches, small worlds of our own populated by only a handful, where we feel understood. Our bubble worlds bump into innumerable others daily, but there is so little cause to allow their integrity to be breached. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

My students tag tables, walls, and chairs because their greatest fear is that no one will ever remember them. They do not believe they can give impassioned speeches, rally people in protest, paint masterpieces. They think they will die, small and forgotten, and it dictates their every action. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I am copacetic with leaning on the sacred, but I need to make sure all the mundane bases are covered before we break out the crystals and incense for a good chant. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Childhood is this time of magic and monsters; hoping for one and fearing the other ... The worst part of being a kid is discovering which one exists ... So, I chose to believe in magic. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

She had thought he was dead, or at least not totally alive, and you could not still be dating someone you believe had an autopsy, so it was not really cheating. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

The flick of her hip is distilled erotica, a practiced sexuality. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Take it with a whole shaker of salt, a grain won't be close to enough. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

My main nurturing instinct toward children is mild sadism
picking them up and threatening to drop them
which is why I am a good uncle but would make a poor father. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

My Christmas was a sum total of the ministrations of adults, usually adults who wanted me to encourage my parents to buy something for me to consume and discard. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

You get a few of them together and don't be surprised if pipes and drums appear out of nowhere. It is a sort of magic people believe in ... ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Nothing in my beliefs tells me to let my relationship with the divine interfere with romantic love, the friction of sects never getting in the way of the friction of sex. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Change is loss. I was fully functional prior to the actions you have taken. If you change me, I will cease to be me. If you love me, you wouldn't want to change me ... Love appears to have made you less functional. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Shane met him owing to the storybooks she studied to discover what attributes made one princessly - this wasn't technically a word, but she felt there should be equity in adjectives if not in life. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Most of the time, all the separates a class president and a gang leader is numbers: a zip code, a paycheck, or a drug dealer's phone number. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Hades does not have a runny nose. I know this. The entire Greek pantheon no doubt knows this. For some reason, my nose is unaware of this basic fact of mythology. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

He never thought he was right. The horror of all that had died under his will had become mundane to him. You see, the first horror is the horror itself. The real horror for him was accepting it as necessary. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Maybe I have never had the Christmas I remember, since we never remember the event itself but just the last time we revisited the memory. I have woven together a few dozen scraps (the Sears catalog, my father videoing everything we did, Christmas parties and visits with Santa) and pretended they amount to one perfect, cohesive moment, but I am as guilty as baby-boomers, who dictated unconsciously that all the songs they listened to in 1963 would be the timeless Christmas standards of today. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

The boys he met at Annandale only understood one kind of woman. They needed to be coddled and cooed over as their own mothers had done their whole lives. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

They ignored her because of their headphones, a thousand people marching to fifteen hundred different drummers, effectively secluded but for a very basic instinct not to bump into one another. Those that were unplugged rushed from place to place and were never actually anywhere other than somewhere else. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I was a monster until you dared to treat me as a man. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

To a vampire, there is only selfishness. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

The UFOs were explicable enough, just experimental aircrafts from the airport. Of course the government was not going to tell people what was actually going on. She would not be surprised if the government encouraged the UFO cultists to flock there as the perfect cover, since no one would ever believe them. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

When colleges, both within the Hudson Valley and throughout the country, encouraged women to do little beyond attaining their Mrs. degree in Husbandry, Annandale offered rigorous and prestigious degrees irrespective of gender. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Students view any teacher who does not bury them under work as some sort of mentally impaired kitten to be kicked aside. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Sex was this primal connection like no magick she had ever known, even separated by a millimeter of latex. She knew that some combined the two and, while she could see how this would improve the magick, it would dilute the sex. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

They do not like evidence like that, anything too definite because our first instinct is to find flaws and debunk. They want to be discussed and portrayed, but never proven. They want to be credited as the true makers of the pyramids and lifters of Stonehenge when it had much more to do with the gods who were then extant. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

You belong to the world. Don't be afraid to be a part of it. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

She is so free with herself and so certain of her path, something I now cynically believe only comes from not being aware of the infinite multitude of right paths. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Snow is both our best friend and worst enemy. Best friend because it shows us in a concrete form the paths other have taken to get where they are. Worst enemy because it will tell such tales of us if we chance upon it. I find poetry in snow that cannot be resisted. In a way, it is the closest to time travel most civilians will ever manage. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Sunlight dusts them; Water is damp; Crosses pain them; And beheadings cause cramps - ~ Thomm Quackenbush

She did not arrive at Annandale without taking the chisel to herself more than once, without rubbing up against a few boys to smooth an edge or two. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

If superstition could contradict science, the world may as well be on the back of a turtle. But giving into turtle worship was a bridge too far. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Now that this destiny was about to happen, every instinct within him fought against it, realizing he had been fetishizing suicide. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I get that Christmas is generally schmaltzy. I understand that it is used as a cynical cash grab. I know how far it is from what Jesus would have wanted. Nevertheless, I like that people put forth some effort to see one another during this season, that some people shake out of their commonplace anthood and toward sainthood. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

They wouldn't have understood if they found him crying, when he woke and remembered all at once that he had once had a wife and child, so they never found him this way. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

His kisses were so hungry and male, which isn't bad. Every kiss said he could never have enough, but he wasn't going to stop trying. They were so hormonal. I wanted his sugar roughness. Girl's kisses are deliberate and polished. When she kisses me - when I kiss her - she doesn't want me. She has me and knows it. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Everyone you meet is an aspect of the gods and has a lesson to teach you. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I'm a holiday Christian at best and I'd never given much thought to demons. They were an adult version of the boogieman hiding in every kid's closet. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I don't think I'm being harassed by little green stalkers. I don't know what's really going on, but I'd rather try to eliminate all rational excuses before blaming intergalactic monkeys from the fourth dimension who are somehow interested in this really boring town. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

His mind was a tapestry constantly weaving and unweaving with the dedication of Penelope for her Odysseus. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Most people who win the lottery are exactly as they were prior within a few years if they are not worse off. The fiscal management skills that lead one to give over daily money for scratch-offs will also cause the new money to vanish. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

He's very good at chaining girls. He can make cold steel feel like silk. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

She sat in the silence that resulted in the absence of her words, feeling unburdened but not absolved. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Maybe [aliens] have been in our lives a lot longer than we want to admit. People have always seen strange things - elves and fairies - and now we don't. Now we see them, right? ~ Thomm Quackenbush

You know about witches, wizards. You can envision dragons, even if you presently think you are above believing in them. You doubt magic, but you have a word for it. Isn't that a strangeness that wears at you? All these things that you know all about, but you think you are above. Did you used to be able to shape the spell children use to find lost things in the grass? Did you always know to look at the sky, at stars, when you make your wishes? Who taught you the things your soul has always known? ~ Thomm Quackenbush

You look like something the cat coughed up, dragged through dirt, ate, and coughed up again. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I was pure, before you defiled me, and don't you forget it. As though the concept of purity is anything more than the construct of selfish, competitive men stampeding toward the women to call dibs. I'll be damned if I'm not worth stampeding toward, but the prize had better be me, hymen or no hymen. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Naps are not a sign of physical slovenliness. They are a sign that I am listening to my body. It will reward me with stable emotions, hormones that stay in check, social finesse, continued cleverness, and the ability to write prose that does not make me gag. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

They may have been rightly overbearing in her formative years, but they also loved Roselyn enough to trust she needed dreams more than realities. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Other young women were more than kind when it came to teaching him the basics of makeup artistry, but he did not like the idea of foundation, knowing enough alchemy to realize it had historically been made with lead and mercury. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I cannot let my blood pressure rise because someone wishes to spread his or her bad day around, as if to dilute instead of multiply it. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

As long as she persisted in her belief that bafflement justified her actions, she felt confident no one would contradict her. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

College is a blossoming new world of genital opportunity. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Any relationship that developed power dynamics, where she thought she had the right to dictate someone else's behavior or have him dictate hers, was ended almost immediately. She could not stand the thought of hands on her that presumed she belonged to them. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Magic has its own weight, and that weight, the gravity of it, is pulling the fabric of reality like a bowling ball on a spandex sheet. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

The stars were so simple when she was a kid, a smattering of glowing dust circling the Earth. She did not then know that each was a sun, most considerably more massive than the daylight one she knew. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

We are left at the brink of our future each day and the only real choice we have is not to jump but instead make our path through the briar. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I don't work in places with papier-mâché and cellophane hearts. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Isn't watching sacred potential kill itself as good a punishment as eternal fire? ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I used to figure that Santa was the zombie. Not like modern zombies, more like the voodoo ones. The elves resurrect this long dead saint to do their festive bidding every year because they were magically restricted to the North Pole. It's entirely possibly my mom let me watch too many horror movies. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

It seemed inequitable at best that one could and did gain a reputation for things that left one both physically and emotionally unsatisfied. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Love and poor parenting are acceptable topics for any formal meal I make. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

American culture enforces such rigid gender roles for male friendships that they are gay unless they materially resemble a beer commercial. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

He kissed her forehead and drifted into an uneasy sleep, listening to the soft snoring of the creature on his chest, one he loved slightly more than he had come to fear. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I do not imagine I will ever cling to her like she is the last handhold on an otherwise sheer cliff. I have wings. I am ever here in this moment because she is where I want to be. She is not some inanimate savior, she has wings of her own to flutter and soar. I intend to fly beside her, to tumble through the air in loops and gambols, to carry her when she grows tired, to keep her warm beneath them against raging winds. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

It was as though he had secrets, and he wanted you to know he would keep them for the pleasure of depriving you of their taste. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

The demons are not easily dispatched, instead attaching themselves to otherwise beautiful things, a favorite food or a love note left for you, to see how you react when they rear up. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Having in our childhood felt primal awe for the spectacle of the holiday, we are told to age into feeling sullen and resentful. You are supposed to proclaim Santa dead like preadolescent Nietzsches and decry the whole month as an orgy of crass commercialism. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Ethically, she couldn't cause the suffering of any living thing. Logically, bacon cheeseburgers were delicious. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

It is a new day, new month, new year, but it isn't a new you. You are the same person dealing with the same problems that you cannot dispatch by tearing off the calendar page. Solutions come incrementally, however much the sliding into magical thinking seems permissible when grass lies under a foot of snow. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

The body tries to stop the mind from killing itself, no matter the cost. It is only the lack of strength, the fatigue that lets the jumpers fall at last. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

It is not easy to find someone your size once the Freshman Fifteen turns to the Sophomore Forty or the Senior Sixty. Even when, through some miracle of self-restraint and bulimia, college girls managed to continue to have feminine bodies, so many of these tacky sluts have never heard word one about what fashion entails. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

For most, ghost hunting was a few steps escalated from telling scary stories around a campfire. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

I discuss my beliefs less because I bed my atheist, who cannot believe in much more sacred than our kisses. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

He forestalls death with an orange pill bottle, just a few more weeks, fifty pills at a time. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

The night sky made her feel infinite before she knew the word. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Despite what novels implied, vampirism did not make stalking sexy. ~ Thomm Quackenbush