Barbara Nickless > Quotes

“You get to the point where you're just empty. Empty of feelings and thoughts. Of bone and flesh and blood. Empty of hope and despair. You aren't dead. But you aren't living, either.”
― Barbara Nickless, Dead Stop

“What fools we mortals are to think that the plans we make are anything more than a soap bubble blown against a hurricane, a frail and fleeting wish destined to burst.”
― Barbara Nickless, Ambush

“Someone had once told Addie that she went through men the way a rat terrier chewed through vermin—quickly and with ruthless efficiency. But Clay felt different. Never mind that they all felt different until, without warning, they felt like all the others.”
― Barbara Nickless, At First Light

“We are part of what society can't bear to remember. Because if they really think about it, if they really look at us and realize the cost we've paid to keep them safe. They can't live with the guilt.”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“Addie’s heart tore at the sight of so many helpless feathered things, forever kept from the sky.”
― Barbara Nickless, At First Light

“In modern warfare, people disappear. Not because they run off, or go native, or get taken prisoner. I don’t even mean that they’re gone because they’re dead. I mean they vanish. One second they’re right there, standing next to you, as bright and alive as they will always remain in the eyes of their parents, wives, children. Maybe they’re talking about how the Broncos just put some whup-ass on the Raiders or how they’re going to start a computer repair business when they get home or maybe just about how sweet that first post-dawn cigarette tastes and would you like one, too? And then they take a few steps and the bomb goes off, and when the pink mist is done soaking into the dust, all you’re left with is a single boot and the guy’s hand. Or maybe just his rucksack spewing his med pack and his lucky rabbit’s foot and his last clean pair of underwear across the field. And there you stand, scared all to shit and grieving like you’ve never grieved. But fuck if you aren’t happy, too. Because part of you is like, sweet Jesus, that could have been me. —Sydney Parnell. Personal journal. Cohen”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“I've spent too much of my life trying to leave the past behind. But the past is a leech. Digs its head into you and sucks your blood until it leaves you dry.”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“And only, some would say, because we’ve forgotten how to see and hear.”
― Barbara Nickless, At First Light

“Do not call us heroes. Not if you are calling us that in order to absolve yourself of guilt over sending us off to an unwinnable war. Some of us are heroes. But some of us never had the chance. And some of us got slammed face-first into the fact that when we looked inside, we found nothing heroic at all. —Corporal”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“The videos that show the coffins coming back. People don’t want to know. And you and I? We’re part of what society can’t bear to remember. Because if they really think about it, if they really look at us and realize the cost we’ve paid to keep them safe? They can’t live with the guilt. They put up their ribbons and they give us fucking discounts at stores and they say, ‘Thank you for your service’ so they can go home and feel good about themselves. But if they really looked at what war does to us? Hell. They’d never let us come home.” “Stop”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“One man’s sin is—by quirk of fate or need or desperation—another man’s necessity. —Sydney”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“In a moment of crisis , your body takes over . It knows what it needs to do to keep you alive, and that's what it does. This instinct for survival comes from your reptilian brain- most basic, simplistic part of who you are. Your reptilian brain breathes for you. Digest and defecates for you . Watches out for you. And if it deems the threat high enough - it kills for you.”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“The only way you feel safe in a relationship is if you feel free to leave it.”
― Barbara Nickless, Ambush

“Remember: fate goes ever as it must. And I am your fate.”
― Barbara Nickless, At First Light

“Normal is the devil-ridden quiet of three a.m. when you’re eyeball-to-eyeball with God, and you know you won’t win because the deck is stacked. Best”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“A door in the back opened, and a sixtysomething man the same faded brown color as much of his merchandise emerged carrying a tray with tea and pastries. Not tall, gently rotund, and owning a long face bracketed by drooping earlobes, Simon Levair resembled nothing so much as a contented basset hound.”
― Barbara Nickless, At First Light

“human tendency to see patterns and connections, even where none exist. It’s how we simplify and manage our world. Which is perfectly understandable. But it can also obscure the truth.”
― Barbara Nickless, At First Light

“I had not known how much of me belonged to Clyde, how much room he had claimed in my heart. He was the one good thing, the one living thing, that had come back with me from Iraq. Clyde had held me together as we shared our grief over Dougie, our relief at leaving the war zone, and eventually our sense of purpose—muted though it was-—when we returned to work.”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“shitticism, from Robert Frost’s description of scatological writing.”
― Barbara Nickless, At First Light

“Someone—perhaps Nietzsche—once said that those seen dancing were thought insane by those who could not hear the music. Our job is to find the killer’s music.”
― Barbara Nickless, At First Light

“sinister? Question piled on question. Who had made it through his gate and to his doorstep? Was it the same person who had hacked his sound system? Was it really just an irate student who also threw axes and had something against Sten Elger? Simon reemerged with a fresh pot of tea and another plate of scones. “More for everyone?” “Please,” Evan said, grateful for the normalcy, while Christina murmured, “You’re a peach, Simon.” Simon blushed. “Just don’t tell my clients that. I prefer they think of me”
― Barbara Nickless, At First Light

“I totally got the rage and the helplessness, which were really two sides of the same coin. I”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“Normal is whatever we’ve gotten used to in our own private universe. It’s war or cancer or poverty. Hopelessness or pain or fear. It’s the cigarette burns on the coffee table and bone-deep exhaustion and the stink of booze and the black eye from—you tell everyone who asks—running into a door. Normal is the devil-ridden quiet of three a.m. when you’re eyeball-to-eyeball with God, and you know you won’t win because the deck is stacked. Best you can do is fold. —Sydney”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“A war in five senses. Blood, sweat, tears, dust, pain.”
― Barbara Nickless, Ambush

“Until they met, Evan hadn’t realized how much of a mask he wore. Every person who falls outside the bell curve of what is defined as “normal” has to do the same—put on seemingly indestructible armor and go out to slay the dragons, be they out-of-reach coat hooks, steep stairwells, or merely the sideways glances and uneasy giggles of the ignorant.”
― Barbara Nickless, At First Light

“How did one launch a cannon of logic against the impenetrable fortress of insanity?”
― Barbara Nickless, At First Light

“My body was so filled with pain that I could not separate the hurt within from that without. And I was tired. Tired in Cohen’s way, tired with the weight that makes your bones two inches shorter. I was tired of killing. Tired of death. Exhausted from scraping up against the kind of hatred that makes a man slap a little girl, slaughter a woman, shoot a dog. All I wanted was to lie in the snow and the dark and think about Clyde and Dougie and Cohen until I ran out of thoughts. Ran out of feelings. Until the wind abraded my skin to nothing and I was only disarticulated bones.”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“You can do everything for the right reasons, and still fuck it up.”
― Barbara Nickless, Ambush

“It's your job, Marine, to stay alive. If that means getting comfortable with your inner darkness, then that's what you do.”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“A child who is troubled or traumatized will look outside himself for an acceptable narrative. He (or she) will turn to the stories of others in order to give meaning and shape to his own life.”
― Barbara Nickless, At First Light