Lee Mandelo > Quotes

“His face twisted through several contradictory emotions and he said, "For fuck's sake Andrew. Is there anything in this scenario that feels heterosexual or well-adjusted to you?”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“He scrounged for something to say, and found a meagre offering: “I did love you.”
But I loved him more.
He couldn’t bring that to life, not aloud, not with his own mouth.”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“One of mine – that had a ring to it, and so did the promise of safety, of being taken in hand. If Riley had tried to slap a label on the thing budding between them, he'd have rejected it out of hand, because nothing encompassed the particular set of feelings he might sum up as owned.”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“It's a choice I made, getting in this thing with you, whatever it is. But don't mistake me, I'm not interested in filling in for a ghost.”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“Come on. I love you, but this is no life.”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“The appeal was obvious. Eddie might have been fond of Riley, talked gothic bullshit with him and got drunk on cheap beer, but now Andrew understood where the hook had sunk in because it pierced straight through the meat of his cheek, too. He wanted to race Halse again, and that was a strange sensation: want. He also wanted to break his knuckles on Halse’s jaw.”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“Having been loved wasn't the same as being loved.”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“Spill enough blood on it, and the earth was bound to go strange.”
― Lee Mandelo, The Woods All Black

“I’m sorry he died before you figured it out. For what it’s worth, I think you might’ve eventually, without me there to displace your bullshit onto. He was head over heels for you, and everyone knew but you, and maybe him. No, I think he knew.”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“the dew-sprangled lawn and the silk of Andrew's hair knotted in his fist, the gross patch of drool spreading on his chest, watching the sun come up and thinking fierce as devotion 'this is mine forever' until sleep sucked him under again”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“Scrolling on his phone passed the time as he fought to tamp down the swelling tide of memories and miseries.”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“Neither of you really gave a shit about me except as a conduit for the feelings you weren’t going to talk about.”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“The stillness of Eddie’s paused life decomposed with each passing week, eaten away as the reality settled in. No one was coming home. The basket of clothes would remain unwashed, the guitar silent, the beer cans moldering. That immensity was the force that drove dogs to waste to death on their masters’ grave.”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“Five months of separation that had stretched into eight in the summer, and now would never end.”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“Every moment of his life that followed would take him further from Eddie, no matter his efforts to scrounge for the remains, but what else was there for him to do except draw what was left as close as he could?”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“Their elbows bumped and neither moved aside, leaving their bones briefly at rest together.”
― Lee Mandelo, The Woods All Black

“The queerly willful creatures of the world had only one another to rely on.”
― Lee Mandelo, The Woods All Black

“I've got so much of your spit in my mouth.”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“If Eddie had been Riley’s friend, he wasn’t that for Andrew. That friendship was a muted fraction of the real thing, the marrow-thing, that tied them together. Through the cavern and their hauntings since, through a life spent with Eddie keeping him leashed but cared for at the same time, he couldn’t find a label that fit where he needed it to go. Maybe instead, just a hard stop: he was yours.”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“As the flames caught and spread, their hungry glow flickered across the pastor's corpse, and that was the closest thing to hellfire Leslie had ever believed in.”
― Lee Mandelo, The Woods All Black

“he was high on Andrew’s shit list.”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“the one with the WRX,”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“One of mine – that had a ring to it, and so did the promise of safety, of being taken in hand. If Riley had tried to slap a label on the thing budding between them, he'd have rejefted it out of hand, because nothing encompassed the particular set of feelings he might sum up as owned.”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“Come on. I love you but this is no life.”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“Part of reparative reading is trying to think about how a story cannot do everything. Nothing can do everything. If you’re reading every text, fiction, or criticism looking for it to tick a bunch of boxes — like if it represents X, Y, and Z appropriately to my definitions of appropriate, and if it’s missing any of those things, it’s not good — you’re not really seeing the close focus that it has on something else.”
― Lee Mandelo

“Whatever secret misgivings they might hold in their hearts, their heads and hands pledged cruelty.”
― Lee Mandelo