Quotes from Kealan Patrick Burke

Everything's dark, nothing is bright," the child sang, "No one can stop us on Halloween night." Evelyn smiled. "This is our night, this is our street, give us some money, or candy to eat." The

Because despite the torture he'd been put through, the pain and loss he did not believe he had done anything to deserve, he had tried to be a decent person, tried to stay within the confines of morality. And all it had gotten him was more suffering.

You say you can't imagine what it must be like to lose a child. Let me make it easy for you. It's the beginning of the end of your world.

Before you get too giddy, remember therapy isn't going to come cheap." "What do you want to do? Sell one of the kids?" He grinned wryly. "No, I already looked into that. Ohio isn't one of the states where it's allowed." "So what are our options?" "We could tip some whale hunters to the location of your mom.

The knowledge that they existed, those phantoms that forever haunted the corner of the eye, was a form of haunting in itself.

People tend to distance themselves from the insane, as if to inquire is to request an invitation to the same dance.

He kept his hands off the plastic tablecloth. It was a museum of past meals.

Angels told me you're the poison, and always have been. Said you used God as an excuse to hurt people, includin' your own kin.

Everything is preplanned, a fact that might not upset humankind as much if they were let in on the secret,

A thin pig was about as common as balls on a scarecrow.

He'd first seen her as a battered broken thing and his empathy had quickly become desire. She would wake, he'd believed, and she would need him. But it was clear now that she needed no one.

The pictures on the walls would show his family and friends and Lori and no towheaded Amish-clad spawn of Satan, and

Positive reinforcement to counter negative experience, because ultimately, nobody wants to face the bad things alone.

Keep goin', he told himself. Not far. Get there and you can sit and figure out what happens next. But keep movin'.

I may have lost my mind for a time, but grief makes everyone crazy.

A strange One-Act play in the theater of dreams.

He loved autumn; the way the leaves turned a panoply of colors before the trees let them go; the earthy aroma the breeze ferried across the fields; the crackle of frost, the clean taste in the air, the way the streets looked after the rain had come and gone.

in--whoever owned this house before him, they must have been colorblind, or into hallucinogenic drugs, or both.

if you're hell-bent on lookin' for fairness, you're on the wrong damn planet.

At first, there was nothing. At second, there was everything. And too late he realized that what he had put into his mouth was not candy at all, but a key.

In a splintered cradle to the left of a shard of moonlight, a doll had been painted to look like a whore.

tough-titty-said-the-kitty,

The old get old because they pulled off a miracle and didn't let life kill them. That takes strength, persistence, commitment, and you should respect that.

I dug deep into the pockets of my overcoats and grabbed fistfuls of patience as I watched them queue for the opportunity to be sorry.