Quotes from Brian Evenson

I am your friend," Gous said. "I drank with you, didn't I?" Kline tried to nod but nothing happened. He could see the wrappings around Gous' hand staining with blood. "Besides," said Gous, "friendship is one thing, God another.

Still," said Ramse. "You're not much. You're what you are and we love you for it, but you're not much.

What was the truth? he wondered. How important was it to know? And once he knew, what then?

People clustered in twos or threes or fours, I have come to believe, both constitute creatures in and of themselves and, together as tandems or triunes or packs, form another sort of myriad-minded creature whose actions are far from predictable.

How much weirder, thought Kline, is it possible for my life to get? And then he pushed the thought down and tried to ignore it, afraid of what the answer might be.

He found the slot that people thought best suited him and he crammed himself into it. He grew up.

His only mistake was not realizing there was a second car. There's always a second car. Except when there's not.

As long as you are following God's will, friend Kline. But even God sometimes becomes impatient. You know the story of Jonah, friend Kline? How many whales do you suppose God will deign send to swallow you? When does God run out of whales?

Yours is a holy calling," he told her. "Or a useless one." "Perhaps," he said, ever the optimist. "Perhaps." Then he embraced her again and departed. It was, the archivist suddenly realized, the last human contact she was likely to ever have.

Of course there's another choice, he thought. There is always another choice. I'm just not going to take it.

With every disaster, I have come to believe for my own personal reasons, comes a compensation, a certain balancing of the accounts - not spread evenly about but clumped here and there, of benefit to very few.

Kline felt his limbs grow suddenly heavy, the missing limb most of all.

At times, I become confused about the order in which things should be told. Parts of me know things that other parts do not, and sometimes I both know a thing and do not know it, or part of me knows something is true and another part knows it is not true, and there is nothing to allow me to negotiate between the two.

Have I been clear enough? The world is dying, is in fact already well on its way to being dead. Were it not, you never would never have wandered in here. You would never have occasion to think, what is this? An unoccupied bunker in which to shelter myself? What luck! And then have fallen into my trap. You instead would have a job in a small town as an accountant, say, or a data specialist.