Eric Nash > Eric's Quotes

“You know,’ he said at last, ‘that was true until you said it.”
― Joel Lane, The Earth Wire and Other Stories

“People mostly kept to themselves, locked in with television and a shelf of videos that kept the past alive.”
― Joel Lane, The Earth Wire and Other Stories

“She no longer wondered if Howard Doyle had a pair of calipers; now she wondered how many he kept. Maybe they were in one of the tall cabinets behind her, along with the family’s pedigree chart. There was a trash can next to the desk, and Noemí slid the journal she had been reading into the can.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic

“It was the house that disfigured the land.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic

“That is because the ghost story is not about guessing an ending, it’s about dreading its inevitable arrival.”
― Michael Newton, The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce

“I had one arm firmly clasped round a breathing, panting, corporeal shape, my other hand gripped with all its strength a throat as warm, and apparently fleshly, as my own; and yet, with this living substance in my grasp, with its body pressed against my own, and all in the bright glare of a large jet of gas, I absolutely beheld nothing! Not even an outline, – a vapour!”
― Michael Newton, The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce

“It struck my eye, the first time I went to Brentwood, like a melancholy comment upon a life that was over. A door that led to nothing – closed once, perhaps, with anxious care, bolted and guarded, now void of any meaning.”
― Michael Newton, The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce

“he carried his body about with him like something he hated.”
― Graham Greene, Twenty-One Stories

“The room itself might have been full of secrets. They seemed to be piling themselves up, as evening fell, like the layers and layers of velvet shadow dropping from the low ceiling, the rows of books, the smoke-blurred sculpture of the hearth.”
― Michael Newton, The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce

“When the whole farm finally got eaten away, the only things left would be its plastic parts – the latches and hooks, clips and cable-ties – all the small disposable components that were never designed to last, but would stay, like the teeth of some enormous sea creature, shed and forgotten throughout its life, becoming, in the end, the only record of its existence.”
― Ben Smith, Doggerland

“For a hundred thousand years the water waited, locked up as crystal, sheet and shelf. All was immobile, but for the slow formation of arc and icicle, which was the water remembering the waves it used to be and the waves it would become again. The only sound was the crackle of frozen mud and ice rind, which was the water, down to its very molecules, repeating its mantra: solidity is nothing but an interruption to continuous flow, an obstacle to be overcome, an imbalance to be rectified.”
― Ben Smith, Doggerland

“The air con had filters and the door was always closed, so all the dust in the room must have come from him. This was his body in particle form, breaking apart, cell by cell, to fill the space.”
― Ben Smith, Doggerland

“Now, the dust in the room was the old man’s too – all tangled up with his own. If he thought about it, he could imagine them both swirling around, caught by the air con’s mechanical breeze, dragged through its vents and grilles, through all the rig’s pipework and out into the air. He could almost feel the real wind carrying them up over the fields, over the cushion of turbulence and out to the open water, the featureless sea, where all noise and trace of the farm diminished. But he tried not to think about it too much. All the dust got caught in the filters.”
― Ben Smith, Doggerland

“He was a creature of cities, of pocket parks and dull anonymous bars; of waiting rooms and holding cells; of emergency clinics; of pain.”
― Kathe Koja, Velocities

“Did Medusa ever smile?”
― Kathe Koja, Velocities

“there are words that cover up the world.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“His father is a person of integrity, that’s why he went crazy.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“First it was the packaged hands that Spanel placed off to the side where they were hidden among the milanesas à la provençale, the cuts of tri-tip and the kidneys. The label read “Special Meat”, but on another part of the package, Spanel clarified that it was “Upper Extremity”, strategically avoiding the word hand. Then she added packaged feet, which were displayed on a bed of lettuce with the label “Lower Extremity”, and later on, a platter with tongues, penises, noses, testicles and a sign that said “Spanel’s Delicacies”.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“He valued the answer and didn’t ask for an explanation because Sergio’s words are simple, clear. They’re words that don’t have sharp edges.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“which god should she pray to if her god lets things like this happen.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“It was the tail end of summer. It was the beginning of winter. It was autumn, formally, but Ronny hated gradations.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open

“Her love was a glob of phlegm on life’s high street.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open

“Nathan’s thoughts were a giant, angry sea tap-tap-tapping on a small dyke wall.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open

“she would always be, at the very best, a dewdrop on life’s river bank.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open

“Her heart was red outside and all clogged up at its centre like a ripe ball of Edam.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open

“The prison was like a set of dirty teeth, and the land around it was like a bad mouth, and the sky above it was like the grey face of the person who owned the teeth and the mouth and didn’t care a damn about either of them.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open

“Sometimes I feel like my whole life has been a long, long wait for something horrible that never actually happened. Like I’ve been in water, up to my neck, fighting to stay afloat, year after year. But if only I’d felt for the bottom I’d have found it. It was there. The ocean bed, just below where I was treading. It was there.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open

“her clothes were hung on old metal hangers like a threadbare assemblage of frustrated sighs.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open

“I had no intention of running after him. It was as though he had already gone somewhere far away, and I could run and run but I would never catch him.”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge

“Some tomatoes rolled in front of my car and must have been crushed under the tires, but I could barely feel them. They offered no resistance, as though they had wanted to be smashed all along, smeared across the road. The other cars swerved to avoid the tomatoes, but I decided to try to hit as many as possible. If I got more than ten, I would go on, I would follow the road where it led. In the rearview mirror, I could see a strip of crimson stretching out behind the car. Did hitting tomatoes feel the same as hitting a person? I began to count: one, two, three, four, five …”
― Yōko Ogawa, Revenge