Never Whistle at Night Quotes

“There was something outside the house that was clearly murderous and looked just like me. There was something inside me that was clearly murderous and felt nothing like me.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“Each room contained the ghosts of future memories.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“Do any of us exist, after all, unless or until we're called to do so? Are we really alive if someone isn't dreaming us into existence? We're all of us one dimension removed, one silent plane away from someone else's reality, waiting to be conjured up. Who sends prayers your way? Who calls you in? Who's remembering you exist? Is it down to just you? How do you reach them, remind them to think of you even as you pull apart, fade and twist under the blackness of space, drifting beyond sound? Past the void's silence, the in-between's pieces of quiet, when no one will listen to you scream.”
― Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“Old things deserve respect. Makes me feel bad whenever Dad and I do our job, clearing trees for the forestry service. All of them trees earned their rings, then thwack, gone.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“I’ve had many names, none of which you would recognize. I am the Night Mother. I am the last, wet gasp of a punctured lung. I am the quiet sound of blood cooling in dead veins. I am the end of all things, and all things that end are my domain.”
― Norris Black, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“What are we really?” she asked. “What do you mean?” “Is it our blood that makes us who we are?”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“[I]t has been one long desolation, one long hungry season since the other people came and took the land and the language and the very lives of the people. A hungry season, even for It.”
― Phoenix Boudreau, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“According to feedback, we’d “failed to meet the relevance threshold.” It was a high bar, they explained. Many important projects had competed for the funding. Therefore, we were invited to resubmit in one year with revisions. They encouraged us to shift our focus to “issues affecting larger populations.” Essentially, they were reluctant to fund the research benefiting our small group of Natives who were clinging to the remnants of their homeland, as if they had a future. As if we’ve ever had a future.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“If someone asked him why Carl could call him Chief, but a drunken white farm boy couldn’t, Walt couldn’t have explained it. When Carl said it, it was filled with an admiration for the American Indian that he had learned from his German mother and Walt could forgive that. When JohnBoy said it, it was full of the mockery of a man whose family had stolen your land.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“We’re also complimenting your life because if you’ve got a paunch, you’re slowing down. You’re enjoying Pimatsawin: a happy life, as the Bush Crees call it here.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“She ran down the spine of the house, her body a shiver traveling over the staircase.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“Distraction from fear with fear," Bets said, swirling her Shirley Temple. "Cool."
"Isn't escapism the reason everyone enjoys horror?" Anders asked.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“This was it, how we all ended. Defeated by their brutality, and a world that would choose them and forget about us.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“Which white guys?”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“There’s not a lot of room to swing a war club in the tight confines of a car. But I bet there’s enough room.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“Ehe, ekosi maka.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“All the hapless teens could have survived the night if they’d made the right choices. The very obviously right choices. No question. It’s like their self-preservation skills were…flipped.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“The ancestors know the real ones. Even the blond ones.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“They are the ugly, pallid Other People whose language is harsh and jagged. The Other People are disgusting, foul, but sometimes they are Empty and it has to eat. It listens to them, six young men who think they are invincible. Nobody thinks that word, but there is a feeling in their thoughts, a taste, that is arrogance. The surety that they are above everyone else. That their actions will have no consequences, whatever they do. People with that flavor to their thoughts are easier to convince.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“Marissa pushes the uncomfortable thought of Candy’s ghosting out of her mind and focuses on the positive as she pulls her BMW through the gate, tossing a wave to the security guard, admiring the way the afternoon sun catches on her new wedding ring, and then turning away as if he doesn’t matter. But of course, it matters. What good are her accomplishments if there is no one there to bear witness?”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“Because it is my job to houseclean, I also know he has a jar of black crickets and grasshoppers under his bed. I know what he did to them. At the time, I didn't know why he had a small jar of human hair hidden at the very back of the bottom drawer of his dresser.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“no peace or gentle reconciliation”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“It was like a vision of the future in the present no one had recognized fully as the future yet, and maybe never would. The future itself was constantly being replaced by the ever-present present, which never looked enough like the future to be the future—plus there was always more future to be had, and the past could loom too, always threatening to come back.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“Somebody once told me that the past is never over. At the time, I thought that was ridiculous, the sort of thing a person says to sound smart. But now I understood—no matter how hard we try to create our own reality, we’re bound by the web of our ancestors, our family, ourselves. The decisions we make and the choices of others”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“All things need to eat to survive. The human eaters, they eat those of us who are not living as we should. That’s what boarding schools did to our people. Colonization took our memories. Assimilation has us feeding our own eyes and ears to the fire. Some even feed their own young to it.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“If you ever do fight, Joe-Joe, don’t think about hurting or not hurting. Fling sand in their eyes, twist their nuts, take them down at the knees. Just stay calm, and don’t let yourself get cornered.' 'Why not?' Grandpa gave a sharp, ugly laugh. ' ’Cause if you’re cornered, you’re desperate. And desperate men do things they might regret down the road.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“But Greg is patient. And there's lots to explore. There are no arrowheads, except for Sagittarius, but he comes across lost souls and helps them find their way to Heaven, or Valhalla, or back to Earth. Wherever they're supposed to go. He is a ferryman on a river of stars, a fisherman again catching light.”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“I know you love him very much, but you need to let him go. They're not the same after they pass over. Calling them back is only asking for trouble”
― Norris Black, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“fighting terrorism since 1492,”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

“Indians are pretty nervous about possession narratives, since those are more or less stories about a body being colonized, which we know a thing or two about, but…the way to twist that, it’s to make the entity possessing you itself Native, yeah?”
― Shane Hawk, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology