Beneath the Empire of the Birds Quotes

“The surface of experience is riddles with caves that are deep and endless, wormholes leading to a primal sea.”
― Carl Watson, Beneath the Empire of the Birds

“The smallest event has far-ranging consequences. A wink is so brief, the eyelash flutters, and sight is reduced to a bead by this act of flirtation that many believe recreates the electro-chemical conditions of first love.”
― Carl Watson, Beneath the Empire of the Birds

“It's not completely arbitrary though, you are drawn one way or the other by the 'poetry' so to speak of the street: the color of the buildings, a car, a man or woman you see at the intersection. You stop for a beer and you meet a guy who takes you for a ride to the town where you fall in love. You live with this woman and she has some friends who are artists or shopkeepers or carpenters, or whatever, and you start thinking that's a pretty good way to live.”
― Carl Watson, Beneath the Empire of the Birds

“And perhaps the ocean she heard that night was just death's approach. My fingers left greasy smears on a glass pane I didn't know was there.”
― Carl Watson, Beneath the Empire of the Birds

“Clouds of black birds screaming to escape the approaching dark- sounds and images like this constantly take you away from yourself.”
― Carl Watson, Beneath the Empire of the Birds

“I said they have wounds and their wounds are like pockets on the body that you reach into because you are carrying in there, some little piece of something, some anxious object that gratifies you for reasons you couldn't know- your heart disguised as your mind maybe, your memory like an animal hunting a human through a vacuous past, a pet placebo.”
― Carl Watson, Beneath the Empire of the Birds

“There are many rates of vibration it seems, many degrees of density, classes and sub planes. If you draw horizontal lines to indicate some, there are others which also must be perpendicular. This assures that every thought produces a double, that at least two separate vibrations always appear. This means the majority of human thoughts are not simple. Things like absolute pure affection probably do exist but more often we find them tinged with pride, jealousy, or animal passion. In the age of chaos water equals oil and everything is simultaneous.”
― Carl Watson, Beneath the Empire of the Birds

“Soon everyone knew it, or at least believed it. Their jaws dropped and bounced like rubber balls, and their disconcertion rang out like cash register change drawers punctuating a tune of degraded consumption. Indeed by some definitions, the room could be said to have warmed a bit with a certain pleasure of conviviality, people enjoying each other's company, empathizing with each other's plight.”
― Carl Watson, Beneath the Empire of the Birds

“You never could know the truth anyway so you might as well put it together whatever way that pleased you.”
― Carl Watson, Beneath the Empire of the Birds

“There was one floor that was all gynecologists. They could tell by the remnants of weird optical contraptions- all the convoluted tools men use when they're searching for the source of their anxieties.”
― Carl Watson, Beneath the Empire of the Birds

“Like so many people, Taylor thought he could not live- that he needed something harder, brighter, more extreme to properly live. The spiritual conquest of nature required a separation between mind and body- this he knew. He knew love must destroy its object and life must devour itself. But why he knew these things he did not know.”
― Carl Watson, Beneath the Empire of the Birds

“The politicians on the front page of the morning edition however weren't laughing, they were serious. They were calling each other liars in large black letters. They seemed to be illustrating that arcane evolutionary theory that politicians are really ugly larval prototypes of our simpler more primitive selves, controlled by gut-level chemical reactions, and broadcast from the inner depts. of the sub-libido in order to impose order on what is really simply ridiculous.”
― Carl Watson, Beneath the Empire of the Birds

“You can buy liquor at a store from a fat man whose face is fractured comically behind the chicken-wire cage. It's comical because he thinks this chicken wire protects him.”
― Carl Watson, Beneath the Empire of the Birds