The Subtle Cause Quotes

“And then she landed, coming to a momentary rest. Just like that, she was done with the jumping and the skipping and the singing and the shouting and anything else to do with the superpowers that held all that was comprehensible into precarious alignment.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“The next revolution is knowing that you are dead already. I, Joshua Newton, am dust. I am blowing across continents and oceans. I’m an exploding ball of fire, hurtling through space in a million different directions. I am distant light and distant worlds and distant life.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“You exist because you are a great story which means you are perfect already and always will be no matter what! If anyone tells you different, or makes you feel like you’re not, they’re a liar!”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“Every adventure allegorically retelling the same essential truth, which was that we are all so much more than we have been led to believe. We are the random spark in the vacuum and the eternal ripple that spreads infinitely from its serendipitous source. We are all of it. Everything that has been, will be, or ever could be.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“They had that look in their eyes she recognized all too well. The “fuck around and find out even if you’re a hundred-pound woman who punches like a baby because I don’t give a fuck I just like to hurt people” look.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“But one thing he did know. They were sure going to miss these days when the world and their lives in many cases nearly came to an end.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“It was like that perfect song you replay over and over. And even if you weren’t to hear it again until years later you would know exactly the notes and exactly the sequence in which they would sound and exactly the feelings they would evoke.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“Will they remember this existence?”

“Maybe in the way fragments of forgotten dreams sometimes lightly superimpose themselves in the mind many years later, only to dissolve in a blink.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“The whole affair was seemingly a replay of some sentimental act he had dreamed up in his battle-weary mind, half-asleep and half-wired in waiting out the night in the rubble of a compromised safe house halfway across the world. Part of him wondered if this was nothing more than the vivid delusion stretching out the faint but escalating whistle between the click of the enemy gun and the bullet exiting the back of his skull.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“There was only that bobbing bundle of stringy, dirty-blonde hair fading into a sea of other heads bobbing and faces coming and going, of storylines intersecting and entwining and then fraying only to become irretrievably lost in the interminable wave-pattern of curiosities fleeting and nothingness everlasting.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“Truth is everywhere but so is falsehood and neither is discriminating.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“Traffic slowed as they entered Fort Washakie with everyone rubbernecking the spirited powwow taking place in an empty field just off the main road. Most of the audience gathered round was non-native. But everyone there was stomping and clapping and surrendering themselves to the rhythmic spell of the drums, much like the performers themselves, and the dust of the earth which coalesced with their smoky breath to envelope them together in a billowing cone of palpitation. And Joshua sat there at the stop sign a little too long because he couldn’t bring himself to look away. But no one inside the VW or in the other cars cared, or even noticed, because they were doing the same.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“And if I had even a nanometer of extra cleavage for every time someone stroked my hair without asking, I’d be Cardi fucking B by now. Needless to say, shit got weird.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“The book closing on the days and the years and every slowly released hug and quick kiss to the top of the head and all the other acts and moments tabulated and tallied for the binding of the seal inalterable.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“When the unrepentant and undeserving powerful are against you, it binds you into a common fate, transforming you into something entirely new and uniquely capable.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“The well-worn track was as straight as Gadsden’s ruler when the nineteenth-century U.S. diplomat had negotiated yet another strong-armed acquisition of Mexican territory to give Arizona its geometrically pleasing southern boundary. Pleasing on paper, anyway.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“But on the ground in modern day, the gap-toothed border wall on the U.S. side was in the advanced stages of decay. It was an unsightly, rusted monstrosity, thoughtlessly imposing itself through the cacti masses who, until a few decades ago, had been peacefully congregating for millions of years along what was now an arbitrary line begging to be taken seriously.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“The blast blew a hole in the smack middle of the strange Utopia vision before him and shook the dust out of the plywood roof which rained down on his head in a barrage of spiraled tendrils. It was through a fit of coughing and ears ringing that Jarvis had returned to himself. Spirit, mind and body reuniting in a Pentecostal collision. Once again, he was immersed in that role he could not seem to escape.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“I’m actually a big fan of Jesus. It’s his father I disdain. There’s definitely abuse going on in that household …”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“But for reasons she would never be able to articulate to anyone, herself included, she took a few steps more into the despairing darkness that had gathered particularly thick in that remote corner of the death camp where she and her helpless child would surely die. Their lives, their deaths, unfit for even the roaches and the crawling things of the world.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“But for those who spawned them and then forgot them to exist, it seemed there was only one thing that could momentarily draw them away from the kinds of blithe exchanges which he did not doubt carried real-world consequences for real people and other living things that must have existed only in theory in their spreadsheet and accounting ledger minds.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“But wouldn’t it be more effective in the end to appeal to the moral consciousness of the citizens of the wealthy and powerful nations of the world, rather than antagonize them?”
“Sure, and I suppose the fly, in navigating the web so thoughtfully spun for it, should always take care to appeal to the spider’s moral sensibilities whenever it comes skittering around.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“The time for building bridges is over. For the few that are willing to swim across to our side, we will welcome them with open arms. We’ll even dispatch life rafts. But we have entered a new phase where we should be prioritizing direct action.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“You gotta problem with Karens? Well, shit-stache, you just drew the Queen of all fucking Karens! Except I’m not going to demand to speak with your manager. I’m just going to fucking cut you unless you get this rolling fartbox of yours in motion toward the North Cove Yacht Harbor!”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“That’s right, bud. My personal apocalypse has been going on for a while now, since my name became the grossest fucking meme ever. And what, you think all the Karens of the world just upped and went to their own fucking island somewhere where we could all get bob cuts and drink caramel appletinis all day while calling the cops on imaginary black people? I mean, hello, we still walk among you.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“Oh, I don’t know,” Karen groaned, feeling suddenly very feisty. “I just don’t think anyone with a loose appendage swinging between their legs—which we know corresponds to a loose screw in the brain—could ever be trusted with something as delicate as the well-being of someone not similarly encumbered.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“But the people of Harappa lived in peace and prosperity for a period about as long as Christianity has been on the earth. And yet, not a single war. Quite the contrast, wouldn’t you say?”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“Joshua took another small sip from his wine glass as his gaze and his thoughts drifted away from the flat-screen television mounted above the marbled fireplace to ponder a roomful of sports jackets and pantsuits and in some cases cocktail dresses but only of neutral tones and minimal detailing if for no other reason than to avoid becoming the subject of the next petty scandal that would nevertheless send shockwaves through their haughty and insular world. The way they stood in their intimate clusters. Their drink glasses held in various poses of sophistication. And whenever they did bring glass to mouth in accordance with judiciously preset intervals it was also for show, as he believed was true of their subdued conversations, which, from where he was sitting, appeared to be nothing more than the unintelligible murmurings of barely moving lips. A whole list of observations came to mind. Not one of them flattering in any way. The atmosphere thick with that certain stuffiness and elitist redolence of an ivy league alumni fundraising gala. Of course, he readily admitted to himself that out of everyone in the room he was very likely the most materially bereft and least credentialed and that this stinging truth undoubtedly inflamed his plebeian impulse. But that’s not what was bugging him.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“It seemed she should be the one in hiding. But no, she was making television appearances like she was some kind of celebrity scientist. A veritable Neil deGrasse Tyson of shadow-tech fuckery, here to make the dismantling of the pillars of shared reality into something upbeat and relatable.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“But in that moment, they already saw him as a lucid vision from the nostalgic past like when a deceased loved one visits you in a dream and you wrap them up in your arms and refuse to let go until you wake up tightly clutching your pillow and crying into it, and still you refuse to let go.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause