33 Quotes by Alden Bell

Not all the magic of earth is benevolent.

It never meant anything, Moses says. Not to the god above it and not to the earth below it. It never did. Not even when they first did it. But it’s the doin it that counts. It’s something. You draw imaginary lines. That’s what you do.The Vestal looks at him kindly, a smile on her lips that seems affectionate--even maybe admiring.Then what do you do with the lines? she asks.And Moses looks at her straight and true. He says:Then you pick one side or the other and you stand there.

...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.

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

It ain’t much of a story, but I don’t feel like tellin it at the moment. Maybe a different night under different stars. These ones are too hopeful.

Dying is Easy , its Living that's hard

...and she's thinking of rage, like an ember or a burning acid swallowing up her knotted viscera. Blindness like the kind that leads men to perpetrate horrors, animal drunkenness, the jungles of the mind.

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

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.