200+ Quotes & Sayings By Thomm Quackenbush

Her lips are like pillows of warm glass. It is strange to find her resistant for even a second, since she has been the kisser and not the kissed. It wasn't like the last time, which felt fumbling and unnatural. That time wasn't off-putting, just like kissing one's sister. This kiss, my kiss, was tingling sweetness, electric apple blossoms. Thomm Quackenbush

Ashlei was free to spout off how much she loved her savior because Jesus was not about to rear back and tell her He did not quite feel the same way, that He had died for the sins of the world just because it was fun and did not want things to be too serious. He was only thirty-three, after all, and might want to martyr himself for other people. Thomm Quackenbush

Tombstones covered the dale, the smooth marble surfaces bright. She had spent days here as a teenager, though not out of any awareness of mortality. Like every adolescent, she intended to live forever. Thomm Quackenbush

Time owed an alliance to the undying. Thomm Quackenbush

She is the sort of person who can do things she doesn’t know yet. There are things you know you know and you know you don’t know and you don’t know you know and you don’t know you don’t know. She may not know what she does know. 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

Shane lingered over a sickly sweet bit of doggerel comparing accepting Christ into one’s life with turning a pumpkin into a Jack-o-Lantern. “It sounds like God is seriously going to mutilate you.” Roselyn took the pamphlet from Shane, her eyes flickering over the text. “I always pictured it a bit more like a lobotomy than an evisceration. Thomm Quackenbush

I am able to separate the mythological aspects of my religion from the practical ones. Jesus, his sacrifice, the Gospels? Those are true to me. Angels, demons, burning bushes, Revelations? Primitive people trying to express the ineffable. I don’t need to be a biblical literalist to love my God. Thomm Quackenbush

There might have been prettier women in the room but, when she turned those babies on, fluttered her eyelashes, I was hers. It had taken me nearly fifteen years to extinguish their light. Now, when she looks at me, it's a vacuum. I had drained so much from her over the course of our marriage that every glance rips a little bit of my soul away to fill the void I had whittled within her. Thomm Quackenbush

I could either succumb to the nightmares I’ve raised or paint them. 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

Like measuring light as a particle or wave makes it what the observer expects, so too does assuming things about reality make it so. I fear the conclusion people gear up for is the wholesale demise of many millions unless this spiritual ennui ceases. How many catastrophes have people expected in the last few decades? How many times have humans expected the End Times? Thomm Quackenbush

She mourned the history that the invisible intruder had erased, but not enough that she would spend a second more of her future feeling the emptiness. Thomm Quackenbush

Some points in time cannot flow. Think of those big-ticket moments, the ones you could still recite from fifth grade: your 1492 and Civil Wars, the Titanic and presidential assassinations. These are icebergs, solid and immense, forcing incalculable eddies to swirl around them. 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

The Word no longer belonged to Man because they believed it did not. Man saw the gods alone as Creators and forgot that there had ever been any other way. Thomm Quackenbush

Angels are just beyond us. They’re creatures that biology doesn’t apply to. They don’t love humanity at all. They just love God. 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

[His] leaving had stabbed her heart. This organ was not inclined to forgive her for vulnerability. Thomm Quackenbush

Loving her has become a part of my religion, a gentle mantra with every beating of my heart. I cannot imagine its Ragnarok without wilting. Thomm Quackenbush

It’s about Nietzsche’s theory of universal debt. Your parents make it possible for you to believe a far better myth than Santa. They let you think that you, as a kid, don’t owe the world a thing. The world can give you, even if just for a few minutes, utter joy without requiring anything from you. It’s not about consumerism. As far as you know, no one buys you these presents. They come out of nothingness, with fantasies of elves attached. You aren’t required to be grateful to your parents or anything like that. They can give to you and nothing is required in return. When you get old enough, when you have kids, you get to enact this myth for them. It has nothing to do with any fat man in a red suit, no matter what we tell ourselves. It’s about owing nothing, and then realizing that you have to do this job of perpetuating this… this fantasy world, whether you like it or not. Thomm Quackenbush

Holding fantasy to our chests only means our hands are not free to work. Thomm Quackenbush

The UFOs were nothing more than the collective fantasies of a stressed out society... The world into which UFOs had appeared was one of under-the-desk siren drills against nuclear annihilation. Society had made a new myth, a communal idea of something outside a species apparently intent on dooming itself. 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

Anyone who thinks traditional and modern interpretations of demons are frightening had better remember that real angels inspired awe because they were so ghastly. How we usually think of angel is all due to Renaissance painters trying to sex up the concept. Most Christians, if they saw an angel in the flesh, would go run for their guns. Thomm Quackenbush

Though her body fit with his like a puzzle piece, his mind was an ever-shifting riddle she felt she could study her whole life and never fully solve. She spent the most time touching him, caressing him, massaging the secrets from his shoulders and embarrassments from his lower back. Thomm Quackenbush

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

Our brains want God even as our minds debunk the divine. Thomm Quackenbush

In the beginning, there was nothing. Then, out of the nothing came the Word and the Word was power. Every utterance of the Word gave form to the Void, starting with beings to utter the Word. There was no Adam, no Eve, and no need. What Man named was. Thomm Quackenbush

I have heard the predictable slew of insults, threats, epithets, and curses. Underneath all these, I hear their fear. They don’t want to hurt me, though I may serve as a stand-in for a man who they do want to hurt. They want to scare me because fear is the only way they have learned to feel powerful. Thomm Quackenbush

You kill by consent, every time you let something… pervert the balance when you have the power to stop it. Thomm Quackenbush

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

God has planned the world too perfectly for me to doubt that everyone is where they are supposed to be. Thomm Quackenbush

When I see the moon on a clear night, I do say "blessed be" and I remind myself to be grateful to the universe that I happen to exist in such a lovely and wondrous world, even and especially as I can rattle on about magma cooling, abiogenesis, and natural selection. Thomm Quackenbush

Making love, sensing how he felt about her in the high tide of passion, seeing herself through his eyes, brought her to an ecstasy beyond words. Thomm Quackenbush

Owing to thousands of generations of over-justification bred into them to keep from the maddening awareness of the true composition of the world, people had a tendency to give themselves the freedom to do whatever Shane told them, as long as it did not conflict too much with their self-preservation. 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

If I can alter my perception of the reality, I can change the reality itself. Thomm Quackenbush

If you get enough people believing one thing, it's like reality bends itself to allow that to exist. Thomm Quackenbush

Maybe the world didn’t need witches and wolves, because the world itself did more to steal away the magic than fantasy ever could. It didn’t matter if one was disobedient, foolish, or unlucky, because the worst things just happened. 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

In an electroencephalogram… one of her seizures was almost identical to an orgasm.. Nothing happened during a seizure that couldn’t happen outside one, except that Roselyn was not in control of it and it happened all at once. Since then, she had experienced hundreds of orgasms and dozens of seizures and, though she didn’t come close to finding the latter nearly as entertaining as the former, it was always in her mind. In the midst of Dryden’s often machine gun lovemaking or her own considerably more directed and soft ministrations, it was always in the back of her mind at the moment of climax–this is a tenth of a seizure, this is a fifth of one. . 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

Pagans earn their reputations for relaxed sexual mores, often in rebellion from the repression of their religions during adolescence. At a Pagan festival, one need only lower one's guard to be offered sex under the cloaking of the sacred. Thomm Quackenbush

Sex is usually cleaner than a blood sacrifice. Thomm Quackenbush

Aw, so he used you as a penis cozy and then left? Guys are pigs. 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

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

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

There is little worse than when the person to whom you want to apologize is having great sex in your room. Thomm Quackenbush

Roselyn adored the scent of sex, the wafting aroma of angel fontanels before they earn their halos. Thomm Quackenbush

Private moments held not a candle to coitus, not even the expensive kind of candle that made the whole room smell of far off seasons. Thomm Quackenbush

Beyond these moments, she could hardly count the fumbling ministrations of boys in high school who, even to her senior prom, never went beyond sticky pleasantries. With one exception, it was just a sort of half-clothed handshake for bragging rights, none hers. Thomm Quackenbush

Eating should be an act of physical necessity or emotional joy, not something to alleviate boredom. 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

There are three people in your life: your great love, the one you want to have children with, and the one whom you can spend the rest of your life with. If you find that last one first, you have it made. Thomm Quackenbush

Paganism is the default of most children, since they excel at magical thinking. 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

Things had improved after he was born. We both loved him with such fervor that it was impossible that some wouldn’t splash back on us. Thomm Quackenbush

I have never tried to walk through a mall in the Christmas season dressed like a jolly old elf. You might as well dress up like a pork chop and walk into an alley full of starving dogs. Thomm Quackenbush

It is difficult to process the sacred masculine when your closest example has been a man smacking you around, verbally degrading you, lording over you, or otherwise proving a poor demonstration of the use of strength. Thomm Quackenbush

Having ascended to some spiritual strength by focusing on the power of the feminine, it is no doubt tempting to wield this strength against that which triggers memories of having once been weaker. Thomm Quackenbush

There is a theory that men do not need Paganism because they have endless avenues of societal power available. Why use spells when one can get a bank loan with little trouble? The world already bends over backward to accommodate men, so why perfect the art of magickally shaping it? Thomm Quackenbush

I see no reason that a man should have any issue with worshiping a goddess any more than a woman would in worshiping a male deity. It is undeniable that women, particularly in the Abrahamic faiths, have been doing just that for thousands of years, though they do like to sneak in the divine feminine under the cloak of the Virgin Mary. Thomm Quackenbush

Women are seen as imperfect or unclean, because of a myth of a tempting apple, because they bleed monthly, because they lack equivalent upper body strength. 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

At least the more modern princesses had the guts to do something aside from clean and wait to be rescued. They armed themselves and tried to provide good role models to impressionable girl tykes. It riled some innate feminist... that the princesses were strongest when they were acting like the men... 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

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

Most magick I have experienced can be written off as a stew of psychology and coincidence, and I truly believe this is where magick is best worked. Thomm Quackenbush

Magick need not be a crutch, but it is hard to argue that anything you lean on in lieu of building your own strength weakens resolve. Thomm Quackenbush

I honor the divine on a daily basis, but I want to know that the greatest magick in my life is living authentically with what I have and can do. 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

Whatever problems we encountered, we put there. If we trace the line back, every struggle derived from some decision we made. It is not chance, it is how we teach ourselves. 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

The trouble with psychics is that they convince you that you get this future no matter what you do. It is as though you can cheat the universe out of your experiences, that you need only tweak something here or there to live happily ever after. It allows for spiritual sloth in the certainty of providence. Thomm Quackenbush

I don't know what my future will bring me and it's terrifying. To stand before this vast expanse and know that the future could take away what matters most simply because that is the nature of indifferent chaos in the hands of wanton boys. 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 discuss my beliefs less because I bed my atheist, who cannot believe in much more sacred than our kisses. Thomm Quackenbush

They were once fairies and elves. Now they are creatures from beyond the stars because you no longer believe in anything but humans. Thomm Quackenbush

Man created god upon his thoughts to externalize, to give form to his belief to give a reason for what they could do. The gods stole away the energies, let man believe he was ruled rather than that he rules. Thomm Quackenbush

Jasmine had endured enough parochial schooling before middle school to have a residual attachment to the beautiful parts of believing, the certainty of knowing one is loved by something beyond comprehension, but also a niggling fear of those who believed too much in anything they could not touch. Believers were the sort to wave pictures of dead fetuses at her when she went to her gynecologist for a checkup. Thomm Quackenbush

Words could be quite enough for magic to occur, when the night was warm enough and the moon waxing. Thomm Quackenbush

If she had some level of theism, we might have a shared theological root from which I could shape holy words. Thomm Quackenbush

Reciting from rote seems a terrible way to honor the gods and a precise killing of the power of the words. Thomm Quackenbush

He was a fixture of the New Paltz community, an inexplicable light switch in the new apartment that definitely turns something on but you can't quite say what. You flick it whenever you get home and inexplicably feel a sort of relief, promising yourself that you'll figure out the wiring one of these days, but not today. Today, you are a bit too busy and this curious switch isn’t hurting anything by being a mystery. Thomm Quackenbush

The stars glittered through the atmosphere, and he thought of the distances that light must take to hit his eye at exactly that moment. Without him here, those photons would have been wasted. Thomm Quackenbush

Her rebirth stood in her mind with the clarity of a perfect diamond, the light scattering the rainbows through her body. Thomm Quackenbush

I have long seen my spirituality as personal, to the degree that I harbor a slight mistrust for anyone who practices similarly. It is as though they are admitting to have on the same cut and color of underwear I do. It may be true, but I don't like to share these details with strangers. 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

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

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

She had seen this relationship dying before it ever lived, but allowed optimism and lust to blind her. Thomm Quackenbush