J.W. Ocker > Quotes

“Because you trust your house, right? It's your house. It protects you from the world and, even more important, all the people out there. It sees you naked every day. It knows your sins. It's the only place where you are your true self. So when that gets corrupted, when that becomes haunted, that's terrifying.”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House

“It was a strange experience to be looking out the window of an eighteenth-century Chinese house at a seventeenth-century colonial graveyard full of people in twenty-first-century Halloween costumes. Salem, guys.”
― J.W. Ocker, A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts

“Tea's like magic, man. I felt like I could slip a tea reading into a church potluck and everyone would be amused, as opposed to the horrified reaction I'd get slamming a deck of Tarot cards beside the green bean casserole.”
― J. W. Ocker

“Where else was I wrong? It was the same question I had asked myself when I'd finally sloughed off Christianity. Where else was I fundamentally wrong about life and the universe and how everything worked? Is life a cycle of us realizing how stupid we are over and over again until we die.”
― J.W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House

“When you place a man like Poe in your rot garden, you need to holy it up real fast, so three years after Poe was buried, they built a church in the graveyard. Actually, they built a church on top of the graveyard.”
― J.W. Ocker, Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe

“We have come to the end of our parade of cryptids. I hope you enjoyed every monstrous float. And I hope that you find some value in the idea that cryptids have significance beyond whether or not they physically exist: that they are symbols of hope that our planet is capable of unlimited surprises; that they can rally a spiraling town by bestowing both an identity and an economy; that they help preserve stories from history that would otherwise be lost. Seen this way, cryptids are more important culturally than scientifically. But the best thing about cryptids, for me, is that they’re just a lot of fun.”
― J.W. Ocker, The United States of Cryptids: A Tour of American Myths and Monsters

“But cryptids exist in yet another way beyond stories and monuments. Many who love cryptids love them more as symbols of the natural world than as secrets of it. Cryptids are hopeful concepts: hope that the world is still a diverse place full of discovery. Hope that humankind hasn't zoned every square inch of the planet for McDonald's franchises. Hope that we haven't grown bored with our mother planet, that she still harbors wonders for us.”
― J.W. Ocker

“Be bold—reach much—write much—publish little—keep aloof from the little wits, and fear nothing.”
― J.W. Ocker, Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe

“The ingredient list for a spell is much less interesting than the effects of the spell itself.”
― J.W. Ocker, A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts

“In 2016. We have robots on Mars and supercomputers in our pockets, and people are still afraid of the hoodoo. Yet”
― J.W. Ocker, A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts

“The Snallygaster looks like a chicken crossed with a dragon choking on an octopus. It has wings, claws, a sharp beak full of tentacles, either one eye or three, and a long tail. It likes to eat people. It may have died a long time ago, dissolved in a vat of moonshine.”
― J.W. Ocker, The United States of Cryptids: A Tour of American Myths and Monsters

“In Australia the idea of the platypus was so preposterous that European scientists declared it a fake even after handling a preserved body. I still have my doubts about it, honestly.”
― J.W. Ocker, The United States of Cryptids: A Tour of American Myths and Monsters

“That’s generally the way things go. The States has cool stuff, but we don’t know it until Europe clues us in. Like the blues.”
― J.W. Ocker, Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe

“We have robots on Mars and supercomputers in our pockets, and people are still afraid of the hoodoo.”
― J.W. Ocker, A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts

“Proctor’s body was thrown in the crevice on Gallows Hill like the rest of the victims. Also, like the bodies of many of the victims, his was supposed to have been rescued under cover of night by family to be buried anonymously and respectfully on his own land. Which today is a median on an off-ramp.”
― J.W. Ocker, A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts