J. Todd Scott > Quotes

“it. I once read in some fantasy book about a phylactery, a place or an object where a creature can hide its soul, protecting it from death. As long as the phylactery is safe, the creature can never truly die. It lives on, rising again and again.”
― J. Todd Scott, The Far Empty

“It was impossible to see where the highway ended and heaven began—as if a huge eraser had dragged across the edge of the world.”
― J. Todd Scott, The Far Empty

“Regret and sorrow, pain and loss, are just part of the deal, the price, for all the joy and beauty and love we do experience.”
― J. Todd Scott, The Flock

“there are parts of you that run so deep they root you in place no matter how fast or far away you try to fly.”
― J. Todd Scott, The Flock

“time passed, and everyone became someone else’s old photographs and letters and regrets and memories. Everything became history, eventually.”
― J. Todd Scott, Lost River

“We’re pattern-seeking creatures. There’s even a word for it: apophenia. We constantly make connections between completely unrelated things, tease meaningful patterns from meaningless noise, and find familiar objects in the world around us. We see the man in the moon, or climbing kudzu looks like a crucified man, or a blackish stain on a hardwood floor stares right back at us. Birds make smiling faces in the New Mexico sky. The world is a mirror, and our tendency to see ourselves in it was once a matter of survival. As soon as a baby can see, she recognizes the human face. The baby smiles at the sight, and her mother picks her up, holds her tight, loves her, protects her. See . . . survival.”
― J. Todd Scott, The Flock

“We all want signs, want the world to make sense and mean something. But then again, we can find meaning in almost anything, if we look hard enough . . .”
― J. Todd Scott, The Flock

“passed, and everyone became someone else’s old photographs and letters and regrets and memories. Everything became history, eventually.”
― J. Todd Scott, Lost River

“Still, Duane had seen his daddy’s truth in it and was set to kill both the Judge and Cherry when the Judge met with him first and told him not to worry—it was all just being handled a different way, promising things were going to be good again. Duane just had to get Cherry out here tonight when the call came and then they were back in business, like old times. He was handling business. And if things were going to be good again, that meant Duane was going to be good too—the free foco was gonna flow, and maybe he wasn’t so fucked after all. He’d hung on to the Judge’s words with both hands, hung them like a noose around his neck. Because now he needed that foco so fucking bad that he would have crawled on his hands and knees out here for it—sucked nigger dick too, right on Main Street, right at the fifty-yard line of Archer-Ross Stadium. Even as it became clear and bright to him now—bright as the oil burning on the ground—just how the Judge had decided to handle their business together once and for all, just how expendable both Cherry and Dupree really were. • • • They’d already spotted Cherry, pretty much no way they couldn’t. Duane, though, had barely left the cover of the truck, hanging back and expecting the shots; leaving Cherry out there exposed, alone. The original plan—and it probably saved his life, at least at the start.”
― J. Todd Scott, The Far Empty

“But it’s a good thing most mothers are women;”
― J. Todd Scott, The Flock

“This is the thing I understand . . . that I've come to accept. I will forever be searching for Ame's face--my mother's face--in every place, in every crowd. I'll always wonder . . . I'll always picture them out there, in some distant somewhere, a place as real as Anne's green. They're my Murfee Lights, and I'll forever wait for them--ghosts. I'll just never know if they're only haunting me. Or I them.”
― J. Todd Scott, The Far Empty