Quotes from Kealan Patrick Burke

Arnold sat on his porch, watching the sun die a phoenix death, bruising the clouds as it struggled to stay afloat in the evening sky.

He loved autumn; the way the leaves turned a panoply of colours 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 street looked after the rain had come and gone.

shivers that settled in his belly and stayed there like moths in a jar.

It was a Saturday, so he was off work and had woken up pleasurably late after a night of equally pleasurable lovemaking.

The slokum's a machine for softening the leather but 'tis a tough one, like playing tug-o-war with a crocodile. Has bladed jaws that clamp down on the leather when you feed it in. Your job is to hold the material at the other end and worry it around while the machine basically chews the hard leather soft. The trick is to leave a flap of the leather hanging down so you can pin it to the machine body with your hip. That way the jaws can't rip the leather out of your hands and send you flying.

Sounds like a talented boy," I told her, but knew I was talking to myself. Still, it made me curious, as it always did, to know who it was that had ownership of such a prized lot in her brain that not even her strokes could turn it fallow, or salt the earth of recollection. Whoever it was, whether real or fantasy, living or dead, they would not truly die until she did. And for that, I envied them.

Four months to the day he first encountered the boy at Walmart, the last of Phil Pendleton's teeth fell out.

Hidden in the pockets of the things that frighten him most is the realization that he doesn't like his mother. Once, he did, but she was different back then, full of love and light. Now she's a ghost playing at being alive, a faded sheet hung upon a coatrack, only there to ensure he doesn't become a ghost too.

If this century was to be known by anything other than its fair share of atrocities and diseases, then surely the gullibility of the weak-minded would qualify as a footnote.

Standing with the headlights behind them, they looked like devils come from Hell itself.

You leave that lid screwed on tight, we're gonna die sooner'r later. Best just to set us loose while we still know how to fly.

Overbearing parents was one thing; waking up to a drunk uncle mistaking you for the toilet was another.

Grief is dishonest and irrational. It makes us believe we would do anything to restore the natural order as we perceive it, even though it is the very same order that extinguishes the ones we love. And should our wish be fulfilled and the dead return, we'd be left to answer

Finch knew that no matter how old it might say she was on her I.D., what those men had done to her had shoved her headlong into adulthood.

Don't you get it? It doesn't matter where I go. Here, back there, France, the North Pole, it doesn't matter. I'll never be safe again. You could build a castle around me and seal it up and I'd still be what I am. And what I am is scared.

you must try to get on with things or the grief will destroy you. You must put away the reminders of loss to have any hope of surviving

I need to see the world put back on its axis, things put right, even if I don't belong in it anymore.

Do what you have to do, I guess. But sooner or later you're going to run out of mirrors to shoot at. Then what will you do?

Do you ever stop to consider how seldom your significant other uses your name in daily life? For us it was always some term of endearment, like "honey" or "babe", or even the more extravagant "sugar badger" or "manly mouse". The only time that changed was during arguments when the strangeness of being called by your name left no doubt that you were in trouble.

I am twelve, John is nine, and we have not yet learned of death. Pain and horror, however, are kindred. They visit us nightly, and take away little pieces of our soul. We live in nightmare and escape during daylight.

It is not how you walk, or where, or how far. It is all in the sound of the steps and how the night receives them.

When you're circling the drain, worrying about direction is pointless.

He quickly brought the gun up, even as she brought the wire down like a tribal Indian spearing a fish.

All my talent, if that's what you'd call it, goes only one way these days. Into the worst kind of darkness.