1
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
2
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
3
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
4
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
5
I hate those people who say you always find the one when you stop looking for her. It is the advice you least want to hear when what you think you need most is someone to love. At best, it comes off like being asked to not think of a white elephant. The elephant becomes the only thing you can think of.Thomm Quackenbush
6
Trying to destroy yourself gives a pretty clear message and it's not one I think you'd like. Sounds a bit like, “I'm too self-centered to be constructive, so I have to open a vein…Thomm Quackenbush
7
We're all suicides. The tragedy is every day that we don't die.Thomm Quackenbush
8
Isn't watching sacred potential kill itself as good a punishment as eternal fire?Thomm Quackenbush
9
Opening her mouth to take a bite seemed forward. Chewing? Obscene. Mutual mastication was out of the question.Thomm Quackenbush
10
She could not keep his death in her head, like when she tried to imagine the infiniteness of the universe and nearly swooned at the vastness of the thought.Thomm Quackenbush
11
The nature of God's plan can be difficult to fathom when you are toiling in some small corner of it, but it is glorious from above, if you allow yourself the perspective.Thomm Quackenbush
12
American culture enforces such rigid gender roles for male friendships that they are gay unless they materially resemble a beer commercial.Thomm Quackenbush
13
Even putting aside the culturally indoctrinated terror that someone in America will assume that two men engage in sodomy behind barely closed doors, there simply isn't an elegant way of asking someone of your gender to hang out for the first time.Thomm Quackenbush
14
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
15
Do you know what Hell is? ...No fire, no brimstone. Man in his infinite folly invented that to rob from his brothers their will. Hell is existing without Our Father. None of His love touches me.Thomm Quackenbush
16
There weren't always happy endings and children would do well to know that vile things could happen to them, that witches and wolves were desperate to steal them should they be disobedient or foolish or simply unlucky.Thomm Quackenbush
17
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
18
Maybe it is like Pascal's Wager, but I want to believe in the immortality of the soul because consciousness is such a fantastic gift that is feels cruel and unfair to end it so quickly.Thomm Quackenbush
19
Natural law has decreed it so. Isn't death as much a part of the flow as life? Why fight it? Because maybe the flow splashes into a bottomless pit past that blind turn.Thomm Quackenbush
20
He had carte blanche to eat whatever he wanted. No amount of broccoli and vitamin D kills ten lung tumors and I know not how many brain tumors. Have the tiramisu.Thomm Quackenbush