Holidays with Bigfoot Quotes

“The term “panic” derives from Pan, the god of the woods. People lost deep in the forest report a terror, as though trees might conspire against them. Nature has no special regard for humanity. Panic is our brain's way of reminding us we should be humble.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“Most people who win the lottery are exactly as they were prior within a few years if they are not worse off. The fiscal management skills that lead one to give over daily money for scratch-offs will also cause the new money to vanish.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“Every year my feet touch its murky water, my soul feels cleaner.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“Humans are narcissists and we like a cryptid that resembles us. Sea monsters, globsters, out-of-place animals, the potentially not-extinct, and mythic beasts do not hold a candle to an ape-man.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“The salacious pictures lost context and daring, turning into contorted masses of flesh. If one couldn't escape a plague of breasts, if they swarmed, they ceased to be erogenous.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“I wanted to love the city. There is an electricity to the dullest day here that overpowers its clinging aroma. Friends have moved cityward, rarely seen again, each acting as though they relocated to Shangri-La, despite muggings and struggling.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“It is no surprise this is the reputed to be the greatest city in the world. It is a blob of brick and neon connected by the arterial subway, equal parts fear and wonder. It breathes, more robotic than organic, but alive.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“At the first of the explosions, I was no longer seeing the fireworks, but as a superimposition of every time that I had sat on concrete and plastic and sand and wood and gazed at the sky the day before vacation ended. I lost this experience in how comingled it was with the past and with vague accounting of when next I would see fireworks.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“I prefer lakes, streams, and ponds to the sea. My people left the oceans for a reason and have since preferred their salt from shakers rather than brine.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“A full life can include things you ingest, but it is a barren mind who considers that the totality of one's persona.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“Portland could have been any city. Port Clyde was too uncluttered to be anything else. There is a reason Stephen King sets his stories in little Maine towns. They are too quiet to be believed wholly savory.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“With museums, I am at best stealing creative yeasts with which to make my strange pastries later. This is why we call it culture.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“The residents of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo had no questions the okapi was real. The colonizers assumed stories of them were the gibber of savages, as colonizers are wont to do.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“In a small community, alien takeovers, portals to Hell, and demonic murder cults can better establish a foothold.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“We were teenage ghost hunters, Ouija enthusiasts, and would have shouted after any Bigfoot who dared to show itself. Better to die becoming another spooky story for cable shows than miss learning an occult truth.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“Children assume that monsters dwell in closets. Pubescent literati know it is the gateway to magic lands.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“It is said—not exclusively by people with eating disorders—that food is a drug. Who doesn't feel better when given chocolate at the end of a miserable day? To your brain, real chocolate mimics love. (For all its miracle, the brain subsists on illusions as much as it does much of the fat you eat. Chocolate supplies both.)”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“Any relationship beyond acquaintanceship is composed of one to three qualities: passion, intimacy, and commitment. Simple friendship has one: intimacy. You can have other friends and you do not feel passionately about one another, or we are dealing with another animal. Most romantic relationships begin with a dollop of passion, often to the exclusion of anything else. The person in your arms is the best in the world, though you barely know him or her. You have never felt this way. Any gaps or deficits are temporarily puttied over by passion. When most people envision romantic love, this is where they stop. Romantic comedies but only rarely deal with washing your lover's dishes because they must be up early for work. No one wants to see the mundane when they can flip the channel to a desperate, emotionally-stunted frottage. The passion of infatuation triggers the release of addictive chemicals. We would rather get another hit than cope with the relative dullness of intimacy and commitment.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“Woodstock was a shiny bead we focus on to compactify disparate threads into one luminous moment.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“To understand Woodstock was impossible if you weren't there. Our national culture has drifted, progressed and regressed to suit the age. Chronologically handicapped, I grok this was a sacred experience forever locked away.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“Even then, even though hippies were unaware, Peace, Love, and Music was a brand, preying on our nostalgia for an experience few who worship it ever had.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“No story about Las Vegas should begin in Vegas. It is a place one goes, often rashly, and from which one returns often poorer in money and richer in experience. It is a crapshoot—pun intended—if the outcome will match the intention. Las Vegas will not disappoint, becoming a story one can tell in a bar, how one got an unfortunate tattoo, or drunkenly married a new acquaintance at the Little Vegas Chapel in front of an Elvis impersonator.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“How I could ever establish a relationship with her father, though? His world was logical and mine was a morass of adolescent feelings. On television, we would grab a beer, replace a fan belt, and I would earn his begrudging respect. He might tell me to treat his daughter right while hitting the head of the wrench against his palm. In this world, I stood a better chance of connecting with the fan belt.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“The ocean touched the horizon uninterrupted, the air so pure that nothing obscured the edge of the world. I understood then the madness of sailors as they abandoned all sight of land for the first time, of those who thought the world flat or the sea full of gods more ancient than time.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“The hauntings died down, as it were, since exhumed bones were taken off display and interred elsewhere. A lack of archaeological ghoulishness will do that.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“If you don't want to marry a partner while on a relaxing vacation, you shouldn't be with them. On the other hand, romantic gestures are fine, but one does have to return home to a sink of dirty dishes and day jobs to keep the lights on. One shouldn't base too much on a beach making one tingly.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“More so than any child I have met, Bear straddled the line of eating nothing and eating everything. He piled a plate with whatever was available, ate three tactical bites to discourage stealing, and ran off to do anything else. When questioned, he would swear he was coming back to finish off the warm macaroni salad and cold hamburger, but he never did. The world was too full of gleeful abandon to pay mind to calories. When his food, now spoiled, ended up in the garbage, he would growl at the rank unfairness of his starvation.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“As any Buddhist monk will tell you, the mind is a monkey. Given a daily routine, it first gets the hang of it, then it gets bored and starts flinging feces. Our simian tenants resent us because nothing changes enough to keep them amused. In protest, they refuse to work at peak primate efficiency.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“Anything after we returned from vacation was a hot autumn day, taunting me with promises of February snow piles.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“A sign alerted that we had better remove anything valuable from the car because it would be stolen. Not "might." Would. Did the beach keep thieves on staff to assure the sign wasn't a lie?”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot