When All Light Fails Quotes

“recognize their own vituperous thought shaming.”
― Randall Silvis, When All Light Fails

“Evil exists, boy,” he told patient Hero, “and it will always exist in abundance, if only to give the good an opportunity to shine.” He scratched Hero’s skull. “Truth #4.”
― Randall Silvis, When All Light Fails

“Beckett’s famous existential cry at the end of The Unnamable, which he now quoted aloud, just as he had many times throughout his life: “‘You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”
― Randall Silvis, When All Light Fails

“There is a significant difference between feeling like a failure and admitting failure. The first can be a driving force; the second is the relinquishment of all effort, and therefore all hope. DeMarco understood this in his bones but had never articulated it to himself or anybody else. It had taken Thomas Huston to put it into words for him. They had been sitting on”
― Randall Silvis, When All Light Fails

“Laying another log on the fire of failure”
― Randall Silvis, When All Light Fails

“Instead of focusing on Flores and Emma he paid attention to his surroundings, let his gaze move about as freely as possible along the winding country roads. He looked at the houses, the farms, the woods and passing fields, and he isolated certain details that he found attractive or interesting, the yellow glow on window glass, a gray cat poised to pounce on a field mouse. He glanced up at the sky, the thick white clouds layered like trifle. There was a softness to all that he saw, a trick of the golden light and the stillness and the openness of the land and sky. Soon he found himself slowing and enjoying the slowness, taking note of all the sights that pleased him. He lowered”
― Randall Silvis, When All Light Fails

“The avidity with which we thieve and kill and ruin one another! The flesh is undeserving of the souls with”
― Randall Silvis, When All Light Fails

“useful knowledge was to be acquired only by doing, by living, by running headlong into the burning house of human experience and coming out singed and scorched, lungs full of smoke. Such knowledge would arise not during but after the experience, when you are sitting alone in the dark and re-creating everything you did and felt and assessing the wisdom or foolishness of each moment, the penalties and rewards.”
― Randall Silvis, When All Light Fails

“and could hear her susurrus breath sounding like leaves stirring”
― Randall Silvis, When All Light Fails

“Hard times destroy the weak and strengthen the strong. Soft times weaken everyone.”
― Randall Silvis, When All Light Fails

“you come with the imprimatur of power.” “Imprimatur, huh?” “Seal of approval. In case you have to throw your weight around.”
― Randall Silvis, When All Light Fails

“the dead leaves blowing about his legs like brittle, papery demons sucked dry of all power, impuissant and doomed to crumble.”
― Randall Silvis, When All Light Fails

“Everything is as it’s supposed to be at that moment. But change is the rule, the guiding principle. All is flux. All is refinement, correction, rectification. And that, my love, is the reason for everything. Change. And its potential for improvement.” She almost groaned out loud. Another”
― Randall Silvis, When All Light Fails

“Everything a person does is manipulative, isn’t it? Every kiss, every handshake, every kind or harsh word. It’s what we do, who we are. Some of us are better at it or more obvious or more deceitful than others. But we all do it.”
― Randall Silvis, When All Light Fails

“simply being laconic.”
― Randall Silvis, When All Light Fails