C. Matthew Smith > Quotes

“Junior finds what he’s seeking in a swale between two ridges. He glasses down at the elk from a hillside aflame with autumn color. The animal strides through the clearing about five hundred yards due east, dipping its head now and then to nibble on receding grass that soon will disappear for the winter.”
― C. Matthew Smith, Twentymile

“In the years that followed, Tsula would find that she could not recall that walk to the edge or the thrust of her legs into the air. Her clearest memory more than twenty years later is of the long, breathless wait as she fell, seemingly forever, and the water swallowing her at last. When she burst from its surface, unhurt, her mind noisy and electric, she grabbed for Jamie and kissed him hard.”
― C. Matthew Smith, Twentymile

“Harlan chuckles to himself and shakes his head, as though enjoying a joke only he has heard. ‘Now I guess it’s only fair to warn you,’ he says. ‘This is not going to go the way you want it to.”
― C. Matthew Smith, Twentymile

“The current needs of survival leave little time for luxuries like sentimentality. It is, he figures, a kind of mercy. No time to dwell on what was lost when there is more yet to protect.”
― C. Matthew Smith, Twentymile

“From the scene arrayed before her now, Tsula knows this new body means something entirely different. The tight bunchings of onlookers in hushed conversation. The watery eyes and mouths covered by fingers. This is how people gather when the dead is one of their own.”
― C. Matthew Smith, Twentymile