Raymond St. Elmo > Quotes

“We look into the eyes of a dog and know ourselves in the presence of a being that forgives all debts. Surely it is some natural relation twixt our species? We can’t all have been saved by our dogs. Unless that look in their eyes is itself a kind of salvation.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, The Scaled Tartan

“What had I believed at ten? Anything I wanted. Any tale to make the day more fun, the night more alarming. In giant pigs rooting beneath the streets. In the corpse-eaters who pulled black carts by night, hunting children out past curfew.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, The Harlequin Tartan

“Balance isn’t always a good thing. Or all the world would
be gray, lukewarm and taste like oatmeal.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, In Theory, it Works

“In the modern world it is not bricks and roads, cannon and swords that define power. No; it is paper. Books of law, deeds of ownership, writs of forbiddance and permission. Titles of lordship, directives of the king's sub-Ministry for Associated Trade. Memoranda from that last desk alone could sink and shake kingdoms, decide the fates of thousands across the sea. Ink runs thicker than blood. Paper: more powerful than an army or the pox.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, The Harlequin Tartan

“The street-crowd below held no one of interest. They bored me. They bored God. Surely they bored themselves. The beggars were dull, the passerby grey, the lounging riffraff leaned bereft of lazy charm. If any possessed magic, they kept it hidden. If they thirsted for miracles, they settled for drinking brown fog flavored with smoke, with a chaser of dust and horse-shit. Every tenth breath spitting it to the cobbles with a wet "splat".”
― Raymond St. Elmo, The Harlequin Tartan

“Math is poetry, kid,” she growled. “Math is sex in the head. All that work of making your mind stroke the
numbers? It’s a natural series of touches you already know by instinct. Once you get over your inhibitions, you
can sit in class or lie in bed and practice formulae and sums, caress the equation till you find the climax of an
elegant solution.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, In Theory, it Works

“Well, teacher-lounge rumor said the boy lived a latch-key life. His father spending the days fishing, so
drunk by sunset the fish sent him home, calling him a cab, helping with his coat and tackle box…”
― Raymond St. Elmo, To Awaken in Elysium

“Every soul is entitled to a daily ration of madness.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, The Scaled Tartan

“Marissa Theodora took out her journal, put it on her lap so Mr. Alva would not see. She penciled thoughts as they came. ‘Picture the classroom plunged into dark,’ she wrote. A touchable darkness, like the fur of a black cat. A thick fog of ink. You can move through it; just not quickly. Can’t shout through it; only talk in low soft tones.’ She frowned. Why ‘plunged into dark’? Why not ‘opened’? Darkness was already everywhere. Under the floor, between the walls. Up in space and below the earth. Everyone’s pockets were full of Dark. Our heads? Stuffed with the stuff. Close your eyelids and roll your eyes inward, and gaze into the cavern of your skull. Behold: your secret vault of Dark. Marissa considered writing that. Decided not. It sounded gloomy, even creepy.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, In Theory, it Works

“Stand and deliver,” shouted a firm voice. A figure took possession of the road ahead, posing dramatic in moonlight and high boots. He held a pistol pointed upwards, prepared to shoot the moon as hostage.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, The Blood Tartan

“The idea of ghosts is exciting. But the reality is absurd. Worse. In writing I call it a ‘sponge’.
An unnatural incident that soaks up all the meaning, leaving daily life looking dry and empty. Exactly the
opposite to what a story should do. Even in a ghost story, real meaning can’t be in the ghosts. It’s in the daily
life the ghost haunts, or the tale is meaningless”
― Raymond St. Elmo, To Awaken in Elysium

“Any soul who’d
go to their own burial is in need of a therapeutic kick to the angsty ectoplasm of their pity-party ass.” Cora
considered a funeral from the deceased’s point of view. The tears, the mourning, the sweetly dishonest words of
praise making the best of a life and its ending. While you the guest-of-honor stood by, unable to partake in
comfort and farewell, only giving embraces not felt, whispering words not heard. God, it’d be torment to surpass
the flames of hell.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, To Awaken in Elysium

“Sensible questions, for a collection of personages to whom ‘sense’ was a humming vibration from the moon.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, The Blood Tartan

“In the war I once drove a gunpowder cart down a mountain,” declared Black. “The cart aflame. Lightning
striking to left and right. Knife in teeth. One hand on the reins, the other firing a pistol. French dragoons leaping
from all sides.” He stared into the past, beholding glory. “City traffic is only a bit more difficult.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, The Scaled Tartan

“Nonentity or not, Maddy had to be smart. Stupid people got noticed. They said annoying things, made idiot fails,
became the popular target of contempt and pity. It took brains and determination to pass unnoticed year after
year. In a small town it took genius. Eternally vigilant to avoid eyes, keeping voice low, in back of the crowd
and with back to the wall. Making no friends, no enemies, no gossip, no waves.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, Letters from the Well in the Season of the Ghosts

“You want a defenseless girl to walk home in the near dark?”
“Seriously? The biggest danger in the streets of Theory, Texas is some farmer letting his dog drive the tractor. A lot of the dogs around here drink.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, In Theory, it Works

“I studied the differences between my side of the table and his. The halves seemed equal, if opposite. But on his half loomed Authority. On my side cowered Fear. I considered just getting up and walking around the table to his side. Balance restored. Of course that was too easy. There is always some rule preventing these simple solutions. Thus, Authority.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, As I Was on My Way to Strawberry Fair

“What to tell this child? That she was beautiful? Not particularly, in the world’s eyes. But the eyes of the world
are blind things knowing nothing of the purpose of sight, of light.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, Letters from the Well in the Season of the Ghosts

“And if you send Barnaby to sell valuables, he'll return with a magic rock that makes soup whensoever you drop it in a pot, say the magic phrase ‘soup, please’, and then add water, carrots, onions and mutton.” “That would be a fine thing to have,” argued Barnaby, suddenly famished. “Are there really such magic stones?”
― Raymond St. Elmo, Barnaby the Wanderer

“What people call 'Artificial Intelligence' are two very different things. There is artificial reasoning, which is the
manipulation of concepts according to math-like rules. And then there is artificial personality, the act of making
a machine seem like a person. There are no rules for 'personality' except whatever trick works. Our artificial man
must do both; hence, Odradek-Dupin. One half of him thinks about the concepts of things, the other half chats
confidently about what he thinks.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, The Origin of Birds in the Footprints of Writing

“Barnaby the miller’s son hid no tangled drama behind his eyes. He was a happy idiot delighting in the summer day, smiling at the pleasant road before him. And yet, and yet... he knew. So why go on an adventure meant for his death? Why laugh with the breeze, greet birds and mankind with a smile? I can’t comprehend it.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, Barnaby the Wanderer

“Whatever the old man heard, for reply he sighed. Sighed with all the weight of his years. Was age weight,
Maddy wondered? It seemed more like... depth. Oh, for sure. The older you grew the deeper into yourself you
sank. Into that cave behind the eyes that everyone had. You started life as a kid dancing on the doorstep, joying
in the world. But by old Mister Mint’s age you’d wandered way inside. The outer world was just a chink of light
far, far away. Easy to ignore. If you bothered, you’d frown towards it wondering what the hell people were
muttering out there in the idiot world.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, Letters from the Well in the Season of the Ghosts

“Yes, I use my chamber pot to punish the wicked. Just not the tea pot. The tea pot is strictly for tea. If you wish to know, my chamber pot is five miles across, deep as Abaddon’s eyes and filled daily with excrement so foul as to make harpies regurgitate the bones of mortals devoured when St. Chronos was a youngster. I fill the chamber pot myself, most mornings. Usually while reading. I take my time. It’s a moment of quiet, which Infernum knows, Infernum lacks. Often I have my most inspiring thoughts right there atop the pot.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, Barnaby the Wanderer

“You inject a tiny dead portion of fantasy into your lives, to immunize from the awful fever of real life. You protect yourselves against the magic of ever being who you were meant to be.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, As I Was on My Way to Strawberry Fair

“Fairness and Commerce are an old married couple that never consummated their arranged marriage.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, Colleen the Wanderer

“Half child and half adult sums to complete idiot. Any sheriff knows that.
Little kids have instincts. Adults have experience. The teens between don’t have any fixed mind to think with.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, Letters from the Well in the Season of the Ghosts

“Blond rider to my left, dark to my right. I rode set about. As honored guest, or prisoner? I could not be sure. I wore a cloak, blade and helmet scavenged from men who had no further need for warmth or weapon. I doubted these creatures cared whether I went armed or not.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, The Blood Tartan

“She stepped within by slow steps, letting eyes adjust. The cabin was large, with several round windows grimed with dust. A table to one side where plates still rested, clumps of rot implying a meal never finished. She looked about for candles or a lantern, something to make a light. But of a sudden, two lights glowed of their own volition. Casting no illumination, for all they were bright and white as angelic wings in a stained-glass depiction of the Upper House. Two eyes, set at feline slant. They blinked once in solemn greeting. Behold a cat, black as night in the deepest pits of Nix. The creature perched upon the table and pondered Collen, who stood fixed; still as stone, still as mouse in cat’s gaze. At long length the cat spoke, voice high, words clear. “Found you,” said Shadow Night-Creep.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, Colleen the Wanderer

“What did I seek in this asylum? To be with her again. To walk through this weird world laughing, swinging clasped hands together. Good. That was the plan, the motto and the bottom line.”
― Raymond St. Elmo, As I Was on My Way to Strawberry Fair

“But why do you visit what you left behind, now that you have reached what you left all this to find?” “What?”
― Raymond St. Elmo, Colleen the Wanderer