Rhys Hughes > Quotes

“During the siege of Panama, he trailed behind his comrades, picking up shreds of purple wool which had once been blue. The fighting was incredibly vicious, but there was a deeper quality to the havoc, an ineffable wiping of belief. Though he wore his name like a sealed pocket, it was picked when he passed into the Cup of Gold, city of burnished lips.”
― Rhys Hughes, The Smell of Telescopes

“The next stop is mine. You’d better follow.” “The stop belongs to the railway, but I know what you mean.”
― Rhys Hughes, The Smell of Telescopes

“Clearly the world wasn’t as natural as we had always assumed. Someone or something had designed it, a joker perhaps, or if geology really was responsible, then blind physical forces had no less a sense of humour than the gods, which is not implausible.”
― Rhys Hughes, Thirty Tributes to Calvino

“The eternal thimble of night roofed him with songs and bells, but let in stars.”
― Rhys Hughes, The Smell of Telescopes

“The boldest yodellers found him, impaled; they stumbled into his shop and over the longest needle in the world, which darned his spleen to the floor. He was buried in his rag coffin, under the altar of San Silvester. Strings were attached to his arms and legs, and whenever a pilgrim entered the chapel, an unseen jig was danced six feet below. The coffin is no longer there: by all accounts Morgan himself seized it for a sail. However, shards of the barber’s mirror can still be found on the hats of the locals, each carrying a reflection which arrived too late to convince a corsair of his humanity.”
― Rhys Hughes, The Smell of Telescopes

“I always felt there was something wrong with me, even when I was a child, a discomfort with my own being. I had an urge to be mean to people. I was too shy to do it properly but now I know the reasons for the faults in my character. I'm the devil.”
― Rhys Hughes, The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy

“[On Betrayal] ...The theme seems to be betrayal in relationships but in fact it is 'honesty' and how there are different gradations of honesty. Revealing the truth is not the only alternative to concealing it. There can be layers of carefully managed confession and revelation. Also the inaccuracy of memory itself can be a crucial factor in determining who knew what and when they knew it.”
― Rhys Hughes

“To reckon his age he carved numbers in his foot, and his sole ached like a goblet which has never held wine.”
― Rhys Hughes, The Smell of Telescopes

“All that now separated retirement from rest was a single box. The previous owner had been eager to protect its contents, using a lock carved from garlic. He picked it with a sprig of parsley and groped inside, pulling out an exact likeness of himself, a puppet double. Even his cork leg sealed the same dry white panic, judging from the way it jerked.”
― Rhys Hughes, The Smell of Telescopes