Boys with Sharp Teeth

by Jenni Howell

Mirrors are excellent liars.

You’re sure somethin’, Mar, he’d say and I’d scowl at him, pretending to be annoyed, even though I heard the way he curved that somethin’, turning it from just a placeholder into a place at the table.

Both of them loom large in my mind—Jamie and Medea—beasts that lie down on the hounds’ bodies and broken spears.

We must not think too much: People go mad if they think too much

“A mirror isn’t just a window,” she says. “It can be a door, too.”

When I turn my mind’s eye upon myself, I understand that I am a thing which is incomplete and dependent on another and which aspires without limit to ever greater and better things

I am always afraid that none of this is real

Although I may desire objects that are wrong, and even that never existed, it is still true that I desire them. —René Descartes, “Third Meditation”

“I think, therefore I am. Should we rephrase to No thoughts, brain empty for you all tonight?”

If we believe things because someone else told us to, then it’s my turn to do the telling.

It’s so, so much easier to be broken than sane.

The darkness, the devil, and you. One is left when we’re finished. I wonder which it was for this boy in front of me.