Hiron Ennes > Quotes

“THE SUCCESS OF ANY parasite is proportional to its harmlessness. Some are intelligent; they avoid detection, allowing their carriers to lead healthy lives until obsolescence. Fewer, in brilliant acts of symbiosis, foster dependence in the host. But too many are loudmouths and fools, instigating aches, diarrhea, fatigue, bleeding, or other braggadocious symptoms. Most parasites cannot think far enough ahead to maintain the well-being of their host, much less their host’s entire species. Usually, such foresight is not necessary, unless humans are involved. They tend to hold grudges.”
― Hiron Ennes, Leech

“Of all the riches he possesses, the right to complain is his most treasured.”
― Hiron Ennes, Leech

“Wherever we are, we want to be somewhere else.”
― Hiron Ennes, Leech

“When they talk to themselves, the ears that listen invariably belong to the mouth that speaks. They will never know the true sound of their own voices.”
― Hiron Ennes, Leech

“To be needed, I suspect, is fundamental to being human.”
― Hiron Ennes, Leech

“I cannot quite understand these fables, nor can I discern their use. I suspect they are born from the peculiar, specific anxiety that there is something fundamentally fragile about humanness. The dread that perhaps, if one takes time to peel back the skin of another, they will find an imposter, a machine, or stranger still, something like me.”
― Hiron Ennes, Leech

“Despite logical input from a conscious mind, a body fears what it fears.”
― Hiron Ennes, Leech

“But never do these dreamers experience what it's like to be the limb that rots away, to be the tooth that falls from the mouth.
- Leech”
― Hiron Ennes

“Never trust anyone who’s too well dressed. If they have good clothes they have good money, and there’s no such thing as good money.”
― Hiron Ennes, Leech

“Suddenly, I am certain he sees me for what I am: a motherless child, too old, to knowledgeable, and still so terrified, captive in a body that has grown without her.”
― Hiron Ennes, Leech

“The front lines had taught him that optimism is often fatal. It's all that looking forward to the future, his old sergeant used to say. You don't see the present blazing in from the flank.”
― Hiron Ennes, The Works of Vermin

“A patient once told me that there are as many ways to die as there are drops in the acid sea. I disagree. Though the sea is vast, I am certain it is finite.”
― Hiron Ennes, Leech

“All babies are ugly,” I reply. “Now get out.”
― Hiron Ennes, Leech

“(From far away, he’s scribbled in the margins of his Manual, delusions are
scary. Up close, kind of sad.)”
― Hiron Ennes, The Works of Vermin

“You began to acknowledge what he had known his whole life: those lines were not yours to draw in the first place.”
― Hiron Ennes, Leech

“Suddenly, I am certain he sees me for what I am: a motherless child, too old, too knowledgeable, and still so terrified, captive in a body that has grown without her.”
― Hiron Ennes, Leech

“I don’t want it. I don’t want to be remembered. I don’t want to rip off parts of myself and leave them behind. Picking off a little more every day and putting it up for display. Like watching your own corpse rot... It’s not worth it. It’s too steep. It’s too goddamn steep, the price of beauty nowadays.”
― Hiron Ennes, The Works of Vermin

“Don’t let anyone in on how much you know. That upper hand will be the one that saves you.”
― Hiron Ennes, Leech

“As the man lays his partner down in the rubble, kneeling over him like a devotee over a martyr, she captures him again. Perfectly timed, perfectly composed, the picture immortalizes a moment of profound tenderness in the chaos. She has no idea what is happening, but realizes with painful clarity that this is the photograph she has grasped for her whole career, this is the reason the camera was rediscovered, the reason light itself bends through a lens. It is the best picture she will ever take.”
― Hiron Ennes, The Works of Vermin

“Just said Didier had a wound in him. Never said he didn't put it there himself.”
― Hiron Ennes, Leech