14 Quotes by Brian Catling

The pain was unbearable. She wanted to cry or scream, but the crawling hollow ache had plugged and sandpapered away all her expressions of self. Those indulgences had been banished forever. Suicide had always been a fiction. A thought that had only ever been a quote in her head. Something for the underclasses, those weak in mind or purpose. Poor people and cowards. Now it sat on her heart like a warm toad. Cherishing the place as a natural habitat.

He sat by the fast water, enjoying its speed, its splendid indifference, and its rippling sound, silently observing and wading birds with their shrill curl of beak and voice. He drank deeply of life so that he knew the taste of it here, knew the vibrant wealth of its dominion, knew exactly what he was taking from the man who would die on this ground.

The quietness here had an agreement with dust; neither settled.

One solitary tear crept through the scars of his face, through the diagrams of constellations and the incised maps of influence and dominion. A liquid without a name, it being made of so many emotions and conflicts, each cancelling the other out until only salt and gravity filled the moment and moved down through his expression.

A new root had grown and in its winding search it had gripped a part of life that she had never experienced before. Her love for the child was overwhelming and gave her a new depth of purpose; the world now grasped her in a more substantial fashion. Held fast to its shifting and the rolling lurch of its futures.

No, it was something else, something with human tendencies, which, of course, made it terrible in a different way.

He knew the hollow longing and guilt were growing stronger and that there was no money or memory to hold on to. There were no facts to grip and the fictions were worn out. He then realised it was time to die, and he did.

I spend my time living close to the animals. I think they have more to teach alive.

Why anyone would find cause to shoot at me remains a mystery. My dealings with other humans are decades past, and all before that is erased. Only my wife keeps the memories in her flesh and moisture, both of which live in my bow.