Todd Keisling > Quotes

“And that’s what they want, kid. For you to strive to be more like them and less like you. Sure, you’ll never be one of them, but the illusion is there so you’ll try to be. That’s their trap and it works every time. The more you try, the more misery you’ll generate, because it goes against human nature to be so dead inside.”
― Todd Keisling, The Smile Factory

“He never sees it, never gazes upon its vastness, only senses its size, a terrible dark wave seeping from the earth beneath the foundation of the old church. This impossibly formless thing, this unescapable void, it crashes over the threshold, spilling over everything in its wake, swallowing the world as it swallows minds and souls.”
― Todd Keisling, Devil's Creek

“Once upon a time, maybe the greater entity of [REDACTED] cared about the souls within its walls, but that all changed when the Benefactors took over. New initiatives were put into place. The company was restructured, reorganized to suit the needs of the business.”
― Todd Keisling, The Smile Factory

“With Skynyrd blaring through the speakers and a full tank of gas, life couldn’t get any better. And it wouldn’t. Waylon would be dead before the sun rose again.”
― Todd Keisling, Devil's Creek

“There is a reality somewhere where we all succumb to complete internal annihilation, and nothing in this world scares me more.”
― Todd Keisling, Scanlines

“Generation Y, Millenials, whatever we were, we weren’t concerned about ancient doctrine or philosophy. Angels and devils were stories told to give us hope or scare us. All we wanted was to live, man, and enjoy our time while we could, come whatever may. Music was great, movies and games were great, and we couldn’t wait to graduate and leave our shitty little town. The horrors of 9/11 hadn’t happened yet, the economy hadn’t collapsed, and a gallon of gas cost less than a buck-ten. The millennium was coming up. The threat of Y2K was real and yet no one understood why. College was on the horizon, the gateway to our successful futures, and what an exciting time that promised to be. Who had time for ghosts and the words of dead men? Why worry about superstitious dangers? How many cracks have I stepped on without breaking Mom’s back? I’ve lost count of how many black cats have crossed my path. We—I—grew up in a time when none of that mattered because tomorrow was a million years away. Even now, as my peers are back home living with their parents, unable to afford what society promised them twenty years ago, we’re all still living day to day. Living in the moment. We have no time for superstition because, hey, I need to meet my hourly quota for the day, week, month so I can pay my bills and continue surviving.”
― Todd Keisling, Scanlines

“A town without a library is like a skull without a brain.”
― Todd Keisling, The Sundowner's Dance

“Who am I without you? He’d spent every moment of their marriage terrified that she would be the one to die first, not only because it would break his heart. Because her death would mean resetting himself back to zero. (…) Jerry hadn’t merely stood in her shadow, he was her shadow. Her passing had freed the sun to erase his definition.”
― Todd Keisling, The Sundowner's Dance

“Was this how he’d spend the rest of his life? Clutching at the memories of his best friend, fearful the might fade like old photographs? The swell of grief was as instant as it was heavy. A sucker punch of reality, time and gravity. Getting older would mean losing her again in the most insidious of ways. His memories of her would disappear in time, beginning with the little details he hadn’t considered savoring in the moment. What she had for breakfast the day after their wedding or what she wore on a random Wednesday ten years ago. All the fractured minutia of a life, forgotten moments, cracked and chipped and flaking away like an old painting.”
― Todd Keisling, The Sundowner's Dance

“The video changed something in me. Made me start thinking about the universe in a different way. No matter what people tried telling you, this was in no way a safe world. Sometimes people collapsed. Sometimes they broke. If it could happen to them, it could happen to you—which was something I’d really grow to understand a couple years later as a teenager, sitting on the edge of a hotel window, trying to find the “courage” to jump. I never did, and I’m grateful for that, but I’m not ignorant: there is a reality somewhere where I did exactly that—jump. There is a reality somewhere where we all succumb to complete internal annihilation, and nothing in this world scares me more. That’s what the Budd Dwyer video implanted in my brain. Not an idea, but a realization.”
― Todd Keisling, Scanlines

“What better way to hurt the living than to make them lose everything they love and deny them death?”
― Todd Keisling, Scanlines

“design of circular glyphs on the floor and wall in all their esoteric”
― Todd Keisling, Devil's Creek