Cody Goodfellow > Quotes

“If he turned and ran, the border would follow, and the moment he turned around, there, one step behind him would be Mexico, staring him down with those eyes -”
― cody goodfellow

“The cars and trucks that passed this way threw their trash out into the forest without pause, faster than the gleaners could pick them up and find new uses for them. The waste had always struck Maceo as a disgusting mystery, but now, it made sense. The indestructible plastic bottles and wrappers that rained on the ground were not merely trash, but seeds—diabolical harbingers of the alien ecology of metal and plastic and advertising that had already swallowed the coast. It was a hostile invader that no one else seemed to want to fight. The dead-eyed souvenir-hawkers at Coba sold the products the signs foretold; beside the road to the ruins of the once-sacred ceremonial city, a looming image of golden arches promised a still-greater ritual awaiting them in Valladolid—the devouring of machine-made ghost-food. Maceo could not read the words on the billboards, but he knew that they sought to infect their victims with the virus of desire.”
― Cody Goodfellow, Strategies Against Nature

“Every underground scene dies a long slow death as the tourists close in, until nothing’s left but posers ogling each other over the bleached remains. If”
― Cody Goodfellow, Strategies Against Nature

“More powerful than drugs, than God or death or fear itself, are stories. With less instinct than any flatworm, we look for them to tell us what to do, how to behave, how we’re going to end up. There’re plenty of atheists in foxholes, but none without a personal mythology that gives them meaning. When life seems long and meaningless, stories make it short and exciting, make every accident into a test, into enemy action, into a Plot.”
― Cody Goodfellow

“The truth is that we do this not to demonstrate how God knows us for His favored elect, but to dare Him to deliver us from this fire, because the promise of Hell looks like a sweet summer Sunday after this cruel and useless school, where every trouble and tragedy is a test we’re doomed to fail, and all that is beautiful, all that gives ease or comfort or pleasure, is a snare of the devil.”
― Cody Goodfellow, The Snake Handler

“It’s always the ones who wring their hands demanding that someone defend, protect or educate the children, who are the most ruthless murderers of childhood.”
― Cody Goodfellow, The Man Who Escaped This Story and Other Stories

“We’re still falling, he tells himself. If there ever was a Paradise, we’ve never been further from it. If you’re up there, God, show me the truth behind all this before I have to go. Let me go knowing what’s at the bottom of all this and I won’t bother you again.”
― Cody Goodfellow, In The Shadow Of Swords