Mr. Splitfoot Quotes

“These woods are where silence has come to lick its wounds.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“Because every story is a ghost story, even mine.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“you don't have to be dead to haunt. Parents, songs, exes.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“Religions need women. Who else would do all the work?”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“History holds up one side of our lives and fiction the other.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“Summer’s ending and the closest thing I’ve had to an adventure was a Google search of Baja California.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“Why do the living assume the dead know better than we do? Like they gained some knowledge by dying, but why wouldn't they just be the same confused people they were before they died?”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“We grow up into ghosts. No”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“I would think a person who doesn’t know what’s she’s running from can’t really be on the run, but that’s not true. Here”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“The first two days without a phone, my insides are jumpy and nauseated, a true withdrawal. My veins ache for information from the Internet, distractions from thought. I’m lonely. My neck, lungs, blood hurt like I’m getting a cold. The world happens without me because I’m exiled with no Wi-Fi. I wonder if my shoes have arrived yet. Maybe Lord is trying to reach me with news of his divorce. I have a parade of grotesque urges. I want to push little buttons quickly. I want information immediately. I want to post pictures of Ruth and me smiling into the sun. I want people to like me, like me, like me. I want to buy things without trying them on. I want to look at photos of drunk kids I knew back in high school. And I want it all in my hand. But my cyborg parts have been ripped out. What’s the temperature? I don’t know. What’s the capital of Hawaii? I don’t know anything. I”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“Ruth does love Jesus, same way she loves Lincoln, Robin Hood, Martin Luther King, and Nat. Handsome men who fight for justice.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“he asks me, as if Ruth’s become invisible. That’s fucked up but that’s what happens to women. We grow up into ghosts. No one wants to screw Ruth anymore so she’s invisible.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“Oh, I’m real. I’m the story of Sheresa. I write a little bit of the fiction of me every day. You see what I’m talking about? Then once you have the boundaries of history and fiction secure, where does everything else fall? Somewhere in between the two. History holds up one side of our lives and fiction the other. Mother, father. Birth, death, and in between, that’s where you find religion. That’s where you find art, science, engineering. It’s where things get made from belief and memory.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“Motherhood,” she says, “despite being immensely common, remains the greatest mystery, and all the language people use to describe it, kitschy words like ‘comfort’ and ‘loving arms’ and ‘nursing,’ is to convince women to stay put.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“Belief just takes steady convincing.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“There isn't any point to it. I'm not getting anywhere. No start, middle, or end. The children scream and I scream, and the noise we make goes out and down and round and round and round.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“Millions of stars overhead make the violence of the Big Bang clear. So much force that matter is still sprinting away from the center. I”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“Microbes. Bacteria. Worms underground that mingle our parts with everything. It’s generous.” He locks his fingers in hers. “And infinite.” Mr. Bell squares his face to hers. “If you can get over the dreaded finite.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“I’m the story of Sheresa. I write a little bit of the fiction of me every day.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“I get enraged at the tyranny of text.” “What’s that?” “You know. Left to right. Punctuation. Page 1, page 2, page 3.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“Nothing stranger than pregnancy could happen to a body. Not drugs, not sex. An unknown that gets bigger every day. An unknown I feel stirring, growing, making me do things my body doesn’t normally do. A program set to play. One day it will talk to me. It will die. How’s that possible?”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“So if you want to convince me that there’s something bigger going on here, some sort of grand plan or map or order in the universe, you’re going to have to first explain why God makes bad moms.” Ruth shrugs. “I don’t know why.” “Well, I do and it’s because he doesn’t exist.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“How does she know herself without a mother? How does she know herself without sound? I guess she knows the shape of things that aren’t there instead.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“This whole time we’ve been walking, I thought we were heading somewhere, but just now, seeing her scared face, I know that we’re also running away.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“The clerk says to me, “If you’re pregnant, you shouldn’t eat cold cuts.” Now that my belly shows, I’m public property. Strangers speak to me all the time. They tell me how I should do everything.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“What, she wondered, was going to happen to people who think they know everything? What's going to happen without chance?”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“Two teenage boys have tattoos on their necks, instantly halving the alienation they’d hoped to achieve.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“After only a week on the road, I am changed. It’s hard for me to stay too long at a diner or coffee shop. I hear so much now. The air conditioners, dishwashers, coffee machines, and restroom hand dryers rage like an angry electric army.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“There’s water in their lungs. Mr. Bell holds her now and afterward. There’s water in their ears and a voice warm as a mother’s should be. They fall toward the voice, through the deepest lake in the Adirondacks. “When you were a baby,” the voice says, “you used to point at birds.” The gesture of their hands entwined, reaching up through their descent, clawing for the disappearing surface, could be misconstrued as fingers pointing out a goldfinch on a branch, a red cardinal nosing the grass for some seeds. Later that night the lake freezes, sealing the scar under a dusting of snow.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot

“The deepest lake in the Adirondacks is made by men and full of enough mystery to betray all humankind.”
― Samantha Hunt, Mr. Splitfoot