Lilith Quotes

“I find no comfort in it, eternity, everlasting life. When I am dead, I will be gone, and I will never know I existed. I will not know I ever was. Just as when I am asleep, I do not know I exist or ever existed.
I am not saddened or frightened. It is this that brings me comfort. Confidence. Confidence to do something now, in this life, with my life. This one and only life of mine.”
― Eric Rickstad, Lilith

“I don’t want to be exceptional. I just want to ride my bike.”
― Eric Rickstad, Lilith

“I find no comfort in it, eternity, everlasting life. When I am dead, I will be gone, and I will never know I existed. I will not know I ever was. Just as when I am asleep, I do not know I exist or ever existed.”
― Eric Rickstad, Lilith

“Did you have Lockdown Mondays when you were in kindergarten?” Jennifer says. I tell her no, we didn’t. “How come?” “I . . . Things were different then.”
― Eric Rickstad, Lilith

“Nine hours of surgery to salvage his bladder so it might work half as well as it did, if infections do not consume him. His prostate cut from his thin boy body, seminal vesicles too, rendering him unable to know a certain intimacy but familiar with the incontinence of the old man he probably will never be, his injuries likely to shorten his life by at least two decades. If he survives the next breath. If he ever wakes. And this surgery came only after another that was more vital. Seventeen hours of delicate, intensive surgery on his lower spine, two cracked vertebrae fused together using bone from his hip, the shrapnel from a bullet lodged too close to his spinal cord to risk removal. His gallbladder gone, as well as a lymph node. Feet of small intestine excised, the lower lobe of his right lung damaged, leaving him with such diminished capacity that playing on the jungle gym will be tantamount to summiting Everest. My boy’s body parts incinerated somewhere in the bowels of the hospital. All this just his bodily damage. Who can know the damage to his soul and mind?”
― Eric Rickstad, Lilith

“There are people in this world, people who are truly sick, people who truly suffer, and you are not sick, you do not suffer, and you don’t ever want to be one of them or make light of others’ trials. And don’t waste food like that. Show respect. You can go without dinner tonight. But”—and Mama smiled her smile that could melt the sun—“I give you an A for creativity. It will serve you one day, you will see, that imagination of yours, that mind. You are special, my special one. Chosen to use your gifts.”
― Eric Rickstad, Lilith