Marcel M. du Plessis > Quotes

“It was a place of dreams and fortunes. So coveted were the treasures of the City that the masters of old encircled it in a wall. As high as the clouds. As thick as ignorance. The wall was the first thing you noticed about the City and the first thing you wanted to forget.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Silent Symphony

“Another cloud bank drew across the moon. In the darkness, she ate. She ate as the ravenous hunger spurred her on. She stripped flesh from bone and savoured the metallic warmth of blood on her tongue. She kept eating and ripping and chewing. Soon she would be full. Soon. Almost.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Curse of Balar

“Even in the darkest night, hope glints on the iris like a distant fire.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Silent Symphony

“Strange how his entire life could fit on a table, for he was that most despicable of creatures, a serial novelist. A battlefield of failures in the form of crumpled paper littered the ground around the chair. He stared at them forlornly. It was not that they were empty, just that they were full of poison. Ink in the shape of ghosts and curses. Beauty corrupted by darkness.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Curse of Balar

“Just outside the walls of the City, trouble was brewing. They came in boats from a land far across the sea. Many boats crammed with many hopefuls washed up on the shores in the shadow of the great cliffs. Like driftwood. These flotsam people were dazed, broken – perhaps at an extreme – optimistic. Surely there would be salvation within the thick city walls?
They appeared in a whisper – like the hissing of the surf. No citizen came to welcome them. No delegates. No photo-ops for ambitious politicians. Instead, only the City’s military – soldiers and officers with faces as hard and blank as the cliff the City teetered upon – were waiting.
They were herded in silence. Those without papers were left on the stony beach. There would be tents, bunks, and prefab houses in time.
The lucky ones were escorted up the great lifts and transported along the subway system – out of sight. A Downtown station would process them.
See this crowd of Driftwood people, Eva. See them huddle together in the dark, the glint of hope in their eyes. The color of their skin, how the women covered their hair, and how the men wore their beards – these were the superficial differences that would mark them so starkly here. The label of ‘other’ already hung around their necks without them even knowing.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Silent Symphony

“Choose your company with care,” he said. “In life, careful casting is essential. Be sure to find someone who knows the full measure of your stupidity. They will keep you anchored amid a torrent of praise. They will remember you when everyone else turns away — just as this person said they would. It is then when you lift yourself out of whatever gutter you’re floating in and try to prove them wrong. You would do well to remember that illusions are cheap. Honesty is rare.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Doom of Balar

“My eyes opened to a bright room, decked with ornament and trinket. Beyond my canvas, draped over a chase langue, was the ivory form of a naked woman. Shapely. Curvaceous. Exciting. Her face was soft. Her auburn hair was shinny and straight – a bugger to paint. Not quite the countenance of an angel. This was a face made ordinary by the slight departure of youth. But I will fix this.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Silent Symphony

“A place of learning felt dead in the hours of darkness. Full of departed pupils and ended conversations. Their abandoned slates still held the ghosts of words and figures of lessons forgotten. Chairs, like rows of scarred and battered soldiers, stood loyally behind their assigned tables, as was the school master’s orders. Not a thing was amiss.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Doom of Balar

“Zaqar Publishing House, a beast of red brick and chipped plaster, protruded from the surrounding buildings like a broken branch in swamp muck. You could hear the whirring of the massive printing presses from the street. Soot and smoke coated the walls, making it look like a smudge. This was, of course, in the days before the paper’s façade had to yellow for it to survive.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Silent Symphony

“Irini nodded again as she gazed off into the trees. “Strange times,” she said. “Times of change.”

“Good or bad?” he asked.

“Change is neither good nor bad, my champion.” She smiled her wolfish smile. “It is a matter of who takes advantage of the chaos. Idle hunters starve, as you know.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Curse of Balar

“Balar, a black mass of buildings with steeply pitched slate roofs and ornate gables of dark wood reaching into the cold air like the legs of a dead spider. It is a town with a history that reached back into the mists of history — a history won by the sword and the pike and paid for in blood.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Curse of Balar

“His hands stopped shaking once she placed them on the piano keys. His fingers moved, finding the right places, starting the melody. The tears stopped and the senseless mumble was replaced by a low, droning hum. His eyes focused on something right above the piano — a focus they did not have a moment before. She watched him as he found the music again.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Curse of Balar

“Anything would be better than these blotches coloured with self-pity and self-importance. Plagued scribbles that sink the heart and darken the soul. Rereading it is akin to eating shards of glass.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Doom of Balar

“They buried her deep, but not deep enough.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Curse of Balar

“The keys started clicking the moment the light of dawn touched the windows. Cas sat on his knees and typed. He stopped. A paragraph. An unbalanced, meandering, paragraph. He ripped it out and turned it over. Fingers rested on the letters. Beginnings gave him the most trouble.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Silent Symphony

“..., I understood that this island – Hearin Island – was home to a tribe of people who communicated solely via pre-recorded messages. Their customary greeting – which chilled the blood of even the most fearsome islander – went something like “Sorry for the voice note”.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Bright Report

“He saw the hiding people, their whispers sounded like the turning of a thousand pages – pages filled with stories he yearned to read.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Silent Symphony

“Monsters on the roof kept me occupied for some time. Dragons and drakes. Werewolves and hags. Stories of love and blood — the kind of stories mother used to read to us. Stories full of dark mysteries and horrid creatures. Oh, how I miss them.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Curse of Balar

“Nights were unbearable. Every night. Everywhere. There was no escaping it, no matter how many times he changed rooms. It was here. The thing was in the room again.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Curse of Balar

“You are an ass,” said Bianca.
“A swine,” added Helga.
“Yes, yes, I am a veritable petting zoo of unpleasantness,” he said. “But I am also your director. Now, back to work.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Doom of Balar

“Cas sighed. ‘I guess,’ he shrugged. ‘Ever heard of the academic voice?’
The door opened. Jasper was dressed in stained clothes – day clothes. Gone was the robe and crusty night shirt. His bushy eyebrows shaded his milky eyes.
‘The academic voice?’ Jasper seemed to chew the bitter words. He squared his shoulders and cleared his throat. He raised his hand in front of him, moving it as he spoke as if he was conducting some invisible orchestra. ‘Hear my voice from on-high and tremble all ye oppressors of good sense and intellectual advancement. Heed my words, students: relinquish thine will and let me oppress thee instead, for he who is not under my heel cannot learn.’ His arm dropped to his side, and he seem to shrink slightly, as if elocution was the air in his lungs. ‘This voice you are looking for,’ he said quietly, ‘sounds like the slap of mortar on brick. It builds walls between those who think they know and those who thirst to know.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Silent Symphony

“Solitude is a thing that creeps in under the cover of night. One does not pay enough attention as time strips away people and things. Some part believes that it will all restore itself one day, only a matter of time.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Doom of Balar

“Within these walls,
That keep us in;
We muffle calls,
We don’t begin.

Here dancing is fighting,
And serpents speak truth,
Forever denying,
A voice of youth.

And so, we’re trapped in silence,
Never to kick free from the viscous prison,
Awaiting the talons of the next tyrant,
Never to recall heroes once risen.
Never to speak,
Never to see.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Silent Symphony

“Superstitions are just the stories we tell ourselves to help us sleep. This is not god. God is kindness. It is that simple, boy. Every worthwhile sage will tell you the same thing.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Curse of Balar

“In the realm of supercars, the moment of turning the ignition ignites a passion in even the most frigid petrol head. Words like ‘purr’ or ‘roar’ are often placed upon the sound of the engine spinning into life. With the Lethe, words like ‘splutter’ or ‘cough’ over did it – it was more like Bessy’s final breath before she was loaded into the abattoir van.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Bright Report

“The brighter the light, the sharper the shadows.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Curse of Balar

“Cassius Wortham was possessive of his notebook. He believed that his ideas – however big or small – were fragile things that could melt away under the condemnatory gaze of a stranger.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Silent Symphony

“...Dah I look like I ‘ave all day?”
Honestly, the man looked as if he was between cardiac arrests, so he probably did not have all hour.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Bright Report

“Truth?” said Helga. “I thought this was fiction.”
Gramméll rubbed his hands together. “My dear, my dear. Fiction — like all good lies — is rooted in the truth. Yes, there is truth in fiction. Hidden truth? Perhaps. Diluted truth? Most certainly. The mind has to be fed the truth a little bit at a time, otherwise it simply won’t understand.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Doom of Balar

“Once upon a time, in the strange town of Balar, there were two handsome brothers, Pierre and Mathéo.”
― Marcel M. du Plessis, The Curse of Balar