Thomm Quackenbush Quotes

Whatever problems we encountered, we put there. If we trace the line back, every struggle derived from some decision we made. It is not chance, it is how we teach ourselves.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Now that this destiny was about to happen, every instinct within him fought against it, realizing he had been fetishizing suicide.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

The trouble with psychics is that they convince you that you get this future no matter what you do. It is as though you can cheat the universe out of your experiences, that you need only tweak something here or there to live happily ever after. It allows for spiritual sloth in the certainty of providence.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

I don't know what my future will bring me and it's terrifying. To stand before this vast expanse and know that the future could take away what matters most simply because that is the nature of indifferent chaos in the hands of wanton boys.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

We are left at the brink of our future each day and the only real choice we have is not to jump but instead make our path through the briar.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

I discuss my beliefs less because I bed my atheist, who cannot believe in much more sacred than our kisses.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

They were once fairies and elves. Now they are creatures from beyond the stars because you no longer believe in anything but humans.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Man created god upon his thoughts to externalize, to give form to his belief to give a reason for what they could do. The gods stole away the energies, let man believe he was ruled rather than that he rules.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Jasmine had endured enough parochial schooling before middle school to have a residual attachment to the beautiful parts of believing, the certainty of knowing one is loved by something beyond comprehension, but also a niggling fear of those who believed too much in anything they could not touch. Believers were the sort to wave pictures of dead fetuses at her when she went to her gynecologist for a checkup.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Words could be quite enough for magic to occur, when the night was warm enough and the moon waxing.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

If she had some level of theism, we might have a shared theological root from which I could shape holy words.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Reciting from rote seems a terrible way to honor the gods and a precise killing of the power of the words.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

He was a fixture of the New Paltz community, an inexplicable light switch in the new apartment that definitely turns something on but you can't quite say what. You flick it whenever you get home and inexplicably feel a sort of relief, promising yourself that you'll figure out the wiring one of these days, but not today. Today, you are a bit too busy and this curious switch isn’t hurting anything by being a mystery.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

The stars glittered through the atmosphere, and he thought of the distances that light must take to hit his eye at exactly that moment. Without him here, those photons would have been wasted.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Her rebirth stood in her mind with the clarity of a perfect diamond, the light scattering the rainbows through her body.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

I have long seen my spirituality as personal, to the degree that I harbor a slight mistrust for anyone who practices similarly. It is as though they are admitting to have on the same cut and color of underwear I do. It may be true, but I don't like to share these details with strangers.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

She was not the sort of woman guys settle for. She was the one they lust after and strive for. She was the one who ruins other people's relationships simply by existing, but she will always be surmounted as guys come to realize the virtues of the approachable girl next door. She was, in brief, too pretty to be trusted or had.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

The boys he met at Annandale only understood one kind of woman. They needed to be coddled and cooed over as their own mothers had done their whole lives.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

We want our delusions and will violently defend these when confronted. We want to believe that the job that is slowly choking us is good, because the effort it would take to change is too terrifying to contemplate. We never want to hear how badly we are being treated in a relationship because we are strong and how dare you suggest we don't know better.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

She had seen this relationship dying before it ever lived, but allowed optimism and lust to blind her.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

You and me? We are never going to be just friends. The only time I'm not adoring you is when I am too busy hating you and wishing to God I never met you...

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Change is loss. I was fully functional prior to the actions you have taken. If you change me, I will cease to be me. If you love me, you wouldn’t want to change me… Love appears to have made you less functional.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

…He sounded as though he had just seen The Pokey Little Puppy meet the business end of The Little Engine That Could.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

The seed of an urban legend find fertile soil at the corner of tragedy and imagination.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

We are given these niches, small worlds of our own populated by only a handful, where we feel understood. Our bubble worlds bump into innumerable others daily, but there is so little cause to allow their integrity to be breached.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Shane never knew how to address her friends' parents. She wanted to call her Mrs. Eliot's Mom, but knew that the cutesiness would not be appreciated. “Mrs. Kaspar” sounded too like a phone solicitor, which would not do after having kissed the circumference of her son's neck.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Men could be utter pussycats when they had even a touch of the sniffles.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

My students tag tables, walls, and chairs because their greatest fear is that no one will ever remember them. They do not believe they can give impassioned speeches, rally people in protest, paint masterpieces. They think they will die, small and forgotten, and it dictates their every action.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

We paw at nostalgia even before we hit twenty, wanting a holiday that never happened, a wholesomeness that could not survive in the wild.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

We may deny the truth of our childhoods while we are living them, but we one day realize the truth of our parents as readily as we do that of Santa. Neither are as perfect as our memories would have them…

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Maybe I have never had the Christmas I remember, since we never remember the event itself but just the last time we revisited the memory. I have woven together a few dozen scraps (the Sears catalog, my father videoing everything we did, Christmas parties and visits with Santa) and pretended they amount to one perfect, cohesive moment, but I am as guilty as baby-boomers, who dictated unconsciously that all the songs they listened to in 1963 would be the timeless Christmas standards of today.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

I wanted a life of adventure. I wanted to travel. I wanted to work my way up to being Somebody. I wanted to leave a mark on the Earth and be remembered.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Magic was not in glitter and sparks. Real magic didn't need to be.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Though Queen Victoria in England had suggested that makeup was impolite, even vanity, Gideon saw it as yet another weapon. It was not so different from magic.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

[H]e had heard of, but given little credence to, magic. There was always someone talking of folk remedies and charms, but it seemed to him the inclination of fools misunderstanding chance.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

I do not want to credit my life to spells and rituals, cushioning me from the consequences of living.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

I reserve magick for necessities, a bit like the good china. It has a time and a place, but eating peanut butter sandwiches off it each morning chips and devalues it.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

I am not interested in wishing hard and having the Universe provide all I need without any work on my part.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Please do not say magic like you are discussing a bowel movement... Humanity expects the lights, so they are provided.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Childhood is this time of magic and monsters; hoping for one and fearing the other... The worst part of being a kid is discovering which one exists... So, I chose to believe in magic.

~ Thomm Quackenbush