Brandon Hobson > Quotes

“People live and die. People kill themselves or they get killed. The rest of us live on, burdened by what is inescapable.”
― Brandon Hobson, Where the Dead Sit Talking

“We are always restless, carrying the dreams of children and the elderly, the tired and sick, the poor, the wounded. The Removed.”
― Brandon Hobson, The Removed

“He turned his head and looked back at me: Believe you have wings, and you fly. Believe you are an animal, and you roar. Believe you are dead in the mud, and you sleep with the worms in the mud. No matter what you decide, provide counsel to your people as they are removed.”
― Brandon Hobson, The Removed

“He wants to believe in the kindness of strangers, the fierce possibilities of hope, the beauty of color.”
― Brandon Hobson, Forty Stories

“This is mostly how I remember her: pure in Indian blood, lovely, dressed in the late day sky. How well she knew this. And I was a young boy staring at her.”
― Brandon Hobson, Where the Dead Sit Talking

“Storytellers.”
― Brandon Hobson, The Storyteller

“The bad spirits followed us like smoke, creeping into our house and into my dreams at night.”
― Brandon Hobson

“At school, some of the guys in my grade played Dungeons & Dragons, a fantasy role-playing game, and soon everyone was talking about their characters at school as if they were real people. We wanted to exist in other worlds. We wanted to lose our own sense of reality, to be other people with other lives. Lives unlike anyone else's.”
― Brandon Hobson, Where the Dead Sit Talking

“Maybe empathy was the beginning of healing, I remember thinking. Or maybe I was unaware that time had already healed me.”
― Brandon Hobson, The Removed

“I tried to think of what to say to her. She stood looking at us, a woman in front of her three children. Her hair was a lighter shade of gray in the sun and hung down in her eyes. I hadn't seen her outside in a long time. Even though the wind was cold, the sun was warm in a way that made me aware of sight and temperature. I hadn't seen our mother in such a light.”
― Brandon Hobson, Deep Ellum

“We were like branches intertwined from the same tree, the same root, reaching out toward the sky to the unknown.”
― Brandon Hobson, Where the Dead Sit Talking

“Listen to all the noise here, the yelling, lockers slamming, loud bells, odd echoes in the halls. The kids are feckless. I need a quiet place, somewhere absent of noise and people. I need a quiet room, a work space without sound. I need to sit in quiet and not think about anything.” The second teacher said, “Did you say feckless?” “Yes.” “A good solid word.” “Thanks. Are you up for a game of Scrabble? We have twenty minutes left.”
― Brandon Hobson, Where the Dead Sit Talking

“past”
― Brandon Hobson, Where the Dead Sit Talking

“I saw the rain lifting from earth to sky.”
― Brandon Hobson, The Removed

“I sat alone in the courtroom. It was freezing in there. I looked at the judge's bench and the witness stand and at the chairs where the jury members sat. I looked at the tall ceiling and the woodwork around the room. I wasn't sure what I felt in the courtroom, but it was no longer sadness, and it wasn't sympathy for my mother.
"I'm sorry," Liz said on the drive back.
"I'm fine," I said.”
― Brandon Hobson, Where the Dead Sit Talking