Craig Clevenger > Quotes

“Everything in the universe is everything else. A man is a killer is a saint is a monkey is a cockroach is a goldfish is a whale, and the Devil is just the angel who asked for More.”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“A person’s life story is equal to what they have plus what they want most in the world, minus what they’re actually willing to sacrifice for it.”
― Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist's Handbook

“The time flies. The time flies feed on rotting clocks.”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“It's taken me years of practice to learn how to act natural.”
― Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist's Handbook

“i learned that predators don't intentionally choose the weak or old or sick. they kill what they can, which means the slow members of the pack. thus, they strengthen the very gene pool they're feeding from. the threshold for what is weak, old or sick gets raised, and the strength, speed and instincts of new generations of hunters grow. a beautiful, self-perpetuating system where evolution is the antithesis of entropy.”
― Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist's Handbook

“Just as it did when I spoke to you that day from the phone, your face comes into focus more and more as I hold you here beside me.”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“Only everyone forgets how seldom our memory is accurate. Having more memory is just a way of distorting a greater amount of the past"p.193”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“I bought a piece of God, ground to dust and mixed with alcohol in a glass bottle the colour of molasses.”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“When you’re in love, your brain secretes endorphins into your blood. Organic morphine leaks out of a gland in your skull, feels like a low-grade opium rush. Some people confuse the two, the head rush and the love. You think you’re in love with a person, but you’re in love with a syringe.”
― Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist's Handbook

“If I'm still conscious to face the consequences of my actions, then at the very least I will know that my actions were real, thay they indeed had consequences, though my lone life will amount to less than a single click of static in the symphony of the big bang. If my actions were real, then so were my memories, and if those were real, the things I've done have allowed me to see God and I0m not afraid of following my life down that eight-second black rabbit hole.”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“When you could discern a real threat from everything else, it was called caution. When you couldn't, it was called paranoia.

...

You cannot separate paranoia from knowledge. The more you know, the more possibilities you see. The more possibilities you see, the more possibilities someone else sees. The more "someones" there are, the more "they" there are. It's a matter of simple math before you realize that They might not like you.”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“...what they show tells you what they want to hide.”
― Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist's Handbook

“Desiree. It's like falling in love every night and having your heart broken every morning... Having more memory is just a way of distorting a greater amount of the past.”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“Imagine the one god himself has reversed his clock and reversed your regrets. Imagine knowing the bone-deep truth that whatever impossibility would make you truly happy has been granted. Imagine knowing you can once again hold your lost lover or your newborn child. Imagine what you feel during those first seconds of knowing. Now, imagine those first seconds last for days on end.
....
Like I said, I'm a chemist. It's all coming back to me.p62”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“I learned to pick up each piece, one at a time, from my pile of potential matches and try to fit it from any angle into the socket, then discard it and move on. Each failure is meaningless. It's not me, it's the pieces, and I have to, absolutely must, try each and every piece every possible way until I find one that fits. They aren't failures, they're steps, small bits of progress.”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“I love you, I said, but not out loud.”
― Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist's Handbook

“Candle is an X-ray, it's a matter of wavelength.”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“كل عمل يتميز بنواياه وكل نية تتميز بعملها. كل شئ في الكون هو كل شئ آخر, والشيطان ليس سوي ملاك آراد المزيد.”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“My left hand is a Rorschach blotch all its own, a six-fingered, skin-blood-and-bone ink splatter. People see it and fly their worst fears and secret fetishes at full mast when they think they’re being discreet. They see it as strange, fascinating, ugly, beautiful, disgusting or erotic depending on what’s behind their eyes.”
― Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist's Handbook

“I do know that I fell in love with the moment of falling in love and I wanted to keep that moment alive forever, at the expense of all those moments to follow.”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“The combination to be on guard for is young and bored, or young and resentful. You can spot them at social gatherings, the grad students or interns who tell you about syndromes, conditions, deviances, and disorders, and they love, love, love to talk. They speak in half-sentences with a knowing smile-squint, watch you falter at the pause, and then keep talking.”
― Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist's Handbook

“If no God, there must at least be a pattern-making demiurge.”
― Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist's Handbook

“الشيطان ليس سوى ملاك اراد المزيد”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“I woke up with a heart attack just out of my field of vision and with my dick in my hand, saying, I love you I love you I love you over and over...And that my dear sweet love of my life, is how things were without you and I'd done everything I could to keep you from knowing that”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“الأمر يشبه أن تقع في الحب كل ليلة ويتحطم قلبك كل صباح . للأبد مثل برومثيوس .. فقط ننسى كم أن ذاكرتنا غير دقيقة . الاحتفاظ بذاكرة طيبة معناه تدمير قدر عظيم من الماضي .”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“لكنهم لا يتوقعون نهم الفضول . بالنسبة للفضوليين ، يعتبر كل فشل ضوءا جديدا يسلط على المشكلة .”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“They see my fingers, they run. Dominique. Alicia. Penny.

They see my fingers, they want their hair pulled. Alex. Renee. Kristin.”
― Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist's Handbook

“People can numb themselves, get used to anything.”
― Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist's Handbook

“وبدأت نار أخرى تلتهب خلف أذني بثلاث بوصات ، وتحفر حفرة في قاع ذاكرتي .
عمر كامل يتكون من أيام .. أعوام .. دقائق .. أشهر .. قد ولى ما عدا قصاصة صغيرة .. تفحمت وسقطت فوق طرف عصبي منسول ، ثم تطير مع النسيم .”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria

“You said I was in love. You were right. But that never happened, either.”
― Craig Clevenger, Dermaphoria