All the Colors of the Dark

by Chris Whitaker

“I just wanted to show you that sometimes things survive despite the harshest of odds.”

Though Saint knew that purpose in its many forms was what kept the living just so.

“If you ever get the chance to make someone smile, or better yet, make someone laugh, then you take it. Each and every time,”

At ten years old he realized that people were born whole, and that the bad things peeled layers from the person you once were, thinning compassion and empathy and the ability to construct a future. At thirteen he knew those layers could sometimes be rebuilt when people loved you. When you loved.

We sense our own kind. Kids dealt a losing hand. We look at others with fucking trivial problems, and we think how long they’d last with a taste of our childhoods.”

“When you make it out of here no one will know how you lost everything, how you stared at an ending they can’t comprehend. It’ll give you power. It’ll make them wish they never fucked with you.”

“Okay is the preserve of the uninspired, Patchwork. I’d rather live and die at the extremes than exist in the middle.”

And I wonder what exactly a mistake is. A thing we should not have done, right? But if learning is built on trial and error there can be no mistakes, only rungs on a ladder to someplace better.”

He imagined the kind of parties they threw and the kind of boys she dated. He did not hate them, just did not dare to try and understand them.

Patch wondered if hope was its own kind of punishment, sometimes worse than certainty, than the long and closed-off road toward healing.

If you learn from the times you go wrong, you can revel in the times you don’t.”

“When it comes to marriage, love is merely a visitor over a lifetime. Respect and kindness, they are the true foundations.

“People talk about one life…one chance. But I reckon a single life is made up of a dozen or more roles and responsibilities. I can count the versions of myself like friend and foe. Mistakes are the detours that remind you of the true way, Saint. To love and be loved is more than can ever be expected, more than enough for a thousand ordinary lifetimes.”

“The bad are the few, but often they shout louder than the many. Don’t mistake silence for weakness.”

“Sometimes people reserve so much of themselves. It’s like saving a fine wine for an occasion that never materializes.”