Tyler Battaglia > Quotes

“The feeling was somehow both loud and muffled, like an emotion screamed into a pillow like that could suffocate it, and for a moment that fear again threatened to overtake Isaias in a way that he had avoided for years.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“I don’t want to face a version of the world where you are a regret. Where I have to wonder what another life might have looked like, with you still in it.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“he let Hector go, at once feeling his absence. He also felt an ache in his temple and in his ribs.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“Even an echo of someone else’s emotions was a start—better than feeling like his own heart was empty.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“Come with me,” he said softly to Hector as he helped him to his feet. Hector, normally so strong, too weak to stand on his own. “And I will fight to save you.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“Isaias saw something shift in his eyes, from gentle to predatory. “I’m sorry to have worried you.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“Isaias stared out at the road, searching, driving aimlessly, and not knowing what to do. Except to reach out to Hector, and hope Hector would shine like a lighthouse through the dark that clouded his soul.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“Hector—never mind that they had lived in the same city for the entire duration of their friendship, never mind that it was easy to pick up the phone or see each other. It had begun as something of an in-joke, to exchange letters despite the proximity. Hector had started it as a way of teasing Isaias, telling him that he was such a timeless and romantic soul that writing letters to him seemed truer to form than just giving him a phone call or sending him a text.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“Knowing what was in the hearts of others meant little when it came to understanding what it meant to feel those things. To love. And Isaias was not one who knew love. It wasn’t his place.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“He watched the steady rise and fall of Hector’s chest, a buoy in the ocean that was all this suffering.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“Where I can only dream of planting flowers in our garden together.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“The arrhythmic pulse of Hector’s soul mimicked a weakening heart, faint and unsteady. Fading. Meanwhile something coated it like grease, difficult to wash off. The demon didn’t have his own soul, surely, so it instead clung to Hector’s like a film of oil.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“Hold on for the future we could almost have. I don’t want to face a version of the world where you are a regret. Where I have to wonder what another life might have looked like, with you still in it. Where I can only dream of planting flowers in our garden together.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“These were the things that he prayed with: his heart was his prayer, and it felt sublime. And when he felt something stirring his heartstrings in reply, he sobbed.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“What secrets were hidden by a man who wrote, in the surest of pencil strokes, I still dream of all the people that I’ve lost?”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“Not just physically, but emotionally. Know him. What’s he smell like to you, feel like to you? Taste him, his soul. Feel the last ounce of him before I drain it all away. Last chance, Father Fuck Up, before I have him all to myself.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“If we make it out of this alive, I promise you I won’t hold back.
I will tell you that you are divine. I will tell you that I worship your goodness. I will tell you that you are a bright light in this world. My world.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“He may not believe in a Christian God, but Hector found divinity in other places, Isaias could tell. And how could Isaias begrudge a man his prayer, even if it was at an altar of flowers?”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“It doesn’t feel ironic, though, so much as prophetic: you are so good that of course the demonic had to come for you. Taking your goodness is a loss for the world, and a win for the forces of Hell, because what better way to crush hope than to take the best among us?”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“But there was something else, under the psychic remnants of love. A darker feeling. Something pulsating. Something hungry that wanted to overtake and consume all the love in the room. Isaias thought that if the others could feel it like he could, it would be let into their souls. That it would poison them, devour the love in their hearts, leave them empty.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“Maybe it was petty for Isaias to worry what Hector might think of him, what he might see in him, when Hector’s soul might be on the line.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“I can’t wait to see the garden we’ll grow together.
Love,
Hector”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“As he reached out to trace the petals of a peace lily, a flower Isaias could recognize, he thought that maybe this was where Hector found worship.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“Hector held onto him as if he were afraid that Isaias would let go of him, as if he would break in the short fall to the plush mattress below. Never before had Hector, his strong, steadfast Hector, seemed so delicate.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“It could be dangerous, feeling other people’s emotions—sometimes the tidal force of them was more than his own heart could endure, subsuming his entire sense of self into someone else’s being.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“Hector’s hand on him, his hand on Hector, seemed to create a perfect circuit, through which Isaias’s emotions flowed into Hector and from which Isaias finally started to feel what Hector felt again, some shadow of his hopes, his dreams, his fears, his secrets.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“Did ‘you shall have no other gods before Me’ apply when it was a religion of God’s own creations? Could God truly disapprove if man worshipped, instead, the beautiful world He made?”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“The only other explanation for why Isaias sensed the faint taste of vanilla on his tongue, sweet and aromatic, when he touched the pages, was that Hector himself had poured his own heart into them.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“Nothing Isaias did was of any significance in the face of the Devil, was it? Forces of that magnitude—the Devil, let alone God Himself—would surely be indifferent to Isaias.”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him

“If he touched it, even by accident, what was the chance that it would poison his heart? Could a mere object hold the power to corrupt?”
― Tyler Battaglia, Pray For Him