A Choir of Ill Children Quotes

“The Crone tires quickly and reaches out for the velvet draperies, sits on the divan, breathing heavily. She's too ancient to have a name any longer. When she coughs you can hear the ages rattling inside her shrunken frame. No human names can cling to her any more- they slip from her dusty shriveled flesh like a young girl's whimsies.”
― Tom Piccirilli, A Choir of Ill Children

“The past can come back in a lot of different ways, chile. It don’t get old and wind up buried like people do. It can die and be reborn. Sins take on shape and peck at your face.”
― Tom Piccirilli, A Choir of Ill Children: A Novel

“Ghosts will forever put in appearances, as they should. Our illusions have muscle and meaning. The past returns at midnight, in the heart of our dreams, and the rains and the willows forever remind us of the sacrifices we’ve offered and those we have yet to make.”
― Tom Piccirilli, A Choir of Ill Children

“It seems that the people who question me the most are the ones who’ve committed the most outlandish or atrocious acts.”
― Tom Piccirilli, A Choir of Ill Children: A Novel

“It will finish badly when she dries out, I suppose, and probably end with madness, but almost everything does.”
― Tom Piccirilli, A Choir of Ill Children: A Novel

“Evil, as considered in these cases, is a lack of choice.”
― Tom Piccirilli, A Choir of Ill Children: A Novel

“He doesn’t hate you, Thomas, he admires you. And we’re often frightened and jealous of what we admire.”
― Tom Piccirilli, A Choir of Ill Children: A Novel

“He was a realist with too much fervor and not enough reverie. He always remained pragmatic in a place that had too much use for superstition.”
― Tom Piccirilli, A Choir of Ill Children: A Novel

“They walk the wire across the chasms of their own souls, looking down into the great depths as, step by step, they cross to the distant side. On occasion they’ve learned something by the time they get there, but not always, and usually not what they expect.”
― Tom Piccirilli, A Choir of Ill Children: A Novel

“LOVE IS ONLY LUST DRESSED UP FOR CHURCH.”
― Tom Piccirilli, A Choir of Ill Children: A Novel

“He was a realist with too much fervor and not enough reverie. He always remained pragmatic in a place that had too much use for superstition. That’s enough to ruin any man.”
― Tom Piccirilli, A Choir of Ill Children: A Novel

“Burke is as small as a white lie and looks as if he might be carried off under the arm of a hefty woman at any second. He feels it too, and smiles cruelly.”
― Tom Piccirilli, A Choir of Ill Children: A Novel

“why she did not trade Dodi to anyone but me, and why I didn’t dig screw worms out of anybody”
― Tom Piccirilli, A Choir of Ill Children: A Novel