The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Three Quotes

“we stand revealed as something our parents are mortified to have created.”
― Ellen Datlow, The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Three

“Somewhere in our early teen years it’s inevitable that our parents become sources of great embarrassment to us, held accountable for everything they are and aren’t, could’ve been or should never be. Before things can get to that stage, though, it sometimes goes the other direction. We realize, even if we can’t articulate it with the same sharpness with which we sense it, that once the bloom is off the earliest years of childhood, we stand revealed as something our parents are mortified to have created.”
― Ellen Datlow, The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Three

“My bad thoughts and fears stop and I Iook up through the ice, and see a world I never belonged in, that never wanted me.”
― Ellen Datlow, The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Three

“—Chickens have a twenty-minute memory. We primates cope through booze and denial. Dial up more of that denial part, you’ll last longer.”
― Ellen Datlow, The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Three

“—Only fools and the dead never change their mind.”
― Ellen Datlow, The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Three

“When the zombies win, their quest to eat and infect human flesh will continue unabated. They will have known only gorging, only feasting; they will not understand the world as anything other than a screaming buffet on the run. Yet there will be only silence and vacant rooms where once there was food, and the zombies, in their slow and stumbling way, will be surprised.”
― Ellen Datlow, The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Three

“Angels can’t die yet I imagine it. A psychiatrist at that place once told me it was a projection. Like with movies. Light passes through the film and it gets bigger on the screen. I guess he was saying thought and faith have that kind of power. But he had no fucking idea who he was dealing with.”
― Ellen Datlow, The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Three

“Sometimes God needs a sacrifice. Sometimes the road is complicit. No life is sacrosanct.”
― Ellen Datlow, The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Three

“this afterlife business, do you? It’s so—like—unnecessary, isn’t it? I mean this life’s bad enough really, you don’t want any more of it after. Do you know what I mean? The whole thing gives me the creeps. I told him straight.”
― Ellen Datlow, The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Three

“Need a fourth?' he asked, earning himself a set of strangely satisfying startled glances. The only way the moment might have been better would be if El had taught Marty the game. But that had been his grandfather, years and years ago. The white-haired man smiled. 'You know how to play?'

'I’d need a card.'

'Card?' Then understanding dawned on the white-haired man’s face. He shook his head. Again, he looked kind. 'Ah. Of course. Jew Mah Jongg. Entirely different game.'

His companions were nodding, too. The guy with the belt buckle said, 'Completely different. Very frustrating. So few ways to win. So many to lose.'

Yet again, Marty felt tears well in his eyes. His uncle’s absence seeping in. 'Yep,' he said. 'Sounds like a Jewish game, alright.'

("Shomer")”
― Glen Hirshberg, The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Three