Chila Woychik > Quotes

“I continue to live inside a dichotomy: what was and what shall be. The pain in my skull is me trying to mesh the two.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“When reading a book, one hopes it doesn’t turn into a painful process. Predictable is bad enough. Laborious is acceptable if the labor produces fruit. But with painfully bad writing, all one can do is grab a hatchet, slice off its head, and bury it.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“I am Frustration. I am Memory-Lost. Sometimes I read a line a dozen times before it sticks. My creative force has slipped. I type slower, speak slower, think at a snail’s pace. I’m Life shapeshifted by Post Traumatic Stress, bastardized by Fate.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“At least I could relate to Rose’s sense of adventure and Harriet Jones’ wacky determination and ingrained sense of responsibility. I can stomach the Tardis when my heroines are in place.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“The number seven is magical, they say. Seven years ’til our cells completely regenerate. Seven years ’til Jacob possesses Rachel, no, Leah, and seven more for Rachel. Seven days in a week. Post traumatic stress often resolves itself in toto only after seven full years have passed. Such is the case for some brain trauma patients too. Seven. It’s a number worth remembering.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“The no-booze rule is one of several shams perpetuated by certain religious groups, presumably to keep their flocks in line. After all, what’s a shepherd to do with drunk sheep?
So take your medicine, but leave the booze on the shelf. We have a label to keep, and it’s not Jack Daniels. Don’t mourn for me. Just tell me what to do rather than teach me what to be. Slam another pill, pop that one last sedative…you’ll find me in the kitchen, washing my glass.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“I’m typing away, wondering why I had that Pepsi Throwback at such a late hour. Caffeine is a compulsion. Art is an obsession. Writing is both.
It weaves in and out, this obsession, forming a basket, a basket I can hide in while pulling its lid over top; it shuts out the noise and normalcy of living. It shuts out the people and caffeinated relationships I love so well. Can you live with an artsy hermit? A sketchy-betchy, meditative, BabyBoomingPseudoHippie? Then short-term visits are in order.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“Support our troops!” we cry, but I say, “Love our veterans!” And when he neglects church, take him cookies anyway. Sing him a song. Pet his cat.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“Let’s face it: suffering discredits goodness. I’m agnostic in practice though faith-based in theory. I used to pray but now know he’ll do what he darn well pleases when he darn well pleases. Will he listen? Maybe. We have a book that says so, but how much happens beyond that book, I can’t say. That’s agnosticism in its bleakest and most honest form. Don’t judge me, yet believe me when I tell you that years of abuse tend to wring out every ounce of one’s ability to understand and adhere to faith in standard form.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“I know more about Emily Bronte than anyone I know. I know enough about her family to have been a part. I’ve walked with her on her damp luscious lonely moors, watched her strain to write on miniscule scraps of paper, seen her hide her works from prying eyes.
I’ve brooded alongside her and participated in her taciturnity. Before her death at the ripe old age of 30, I nursed her from the things that ultimately killed her: tuberculosis with a side order of Victorian thinking.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“Texting is a sex toy: pleasurable but a substitute for the real thing. Love has a face. Video chatting is good, but who’s comfortable enough to share their “bed hair”? Love isn’t about pat answers.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“Life is flinching in the midst of breathing, gasping at the thought of dying. It’s climbing ropeless up sheer rock faces, groping for the next finger-hole of hope. Steady on! Only a thousand feet to go and after that a jungle, a minefield, a rapids. (Can I stop smiling now?)
Once, not long ago, I was flung off the cliff of the moment, thrust into an illicit relationship with destiny, an affair not of my making. Was I making love or being raped? The lines were fuzzy.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“I’ve never had a rat, never chased one. I chase my own tail and that’s enough. I must now make plans for the day I catch it.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“I don’t know what it’s like to be a friend any more than you do. I think “hard” when it should be “soft,” or “gentle” when “forceful” is the key. Often it’s giving every last drop of blood, then skinning myself and giving the skin too, when all you really want is my skeleton, wagging a bony finger, signing how much I love you.
I’ve drained and skinned and boned. I’ve signed back obscenities and watched your bone dust drift away. No, I don’t know the meaning of “friend.” Teach me?”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“The setting sun threatened to consume me—it could have, you know. It would have been a beautiful death with an honorable eulogy: slain by a magnificent slice of piercing orange energy. I simply turned and walked away; I would live another day.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“sunset and evening star hunching and bending sleeping and slipping virus pneumonia coughing and crying hope in the small things heaven looks brighter aching and falling earth is still darkness slip into sleeping sleepings of death dead now and buried cold now and crumbling dust now and hope-filled heaven is hope (and loneliness lingers in those left behind)”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“I’ve learned to lick
my own foul wounds
and prize the taste of ache.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“Oh God, for a few who will love me in tiny ways every single day of my flashing existence. For a mere one or two who will treat me like the trash I am, who will love the smell of garbage and rummage through the bin of my failings to find the wrapped cheeseburger they can do without but consider long enough to get their taste buds used to the idea.
Oh for a melodious tongue to sing me a song about french fries.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“Middle-age should be shot. Things about it gall me. First, that those younger despise the thought of getting old, and, hence, me. Second, that those older despise the thought of me being younger, and, hence, me. So here I am, pressed from both sides, forced to wear blinders—FULL SPEED AHEAD!”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“Today I fed him right off the bat, and only checked Facebook twice.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“The unrelenting grip of Soldier’s Syndrome slips finger by slow finger. The marrow’s been affected—emotional leukemia at the deepest level. Transplants of love and friendship aid healing, yet time is still key, and the clock never ticks fast enough. Eternity gains perspective when seconds feel like years. How long have I been gone? Six eternities and counting.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“PLEASE TELL ME YOU KNOW OF SYLVIA PLATH

Conventions bleed my soul
squeeze me old
wear me grey
like a headstone in transit.

It’s tradition and form—
fear of the unknown—
driving me dead
in tight spaces darkly.

I cry aloud
but who can hear
when I stand alone
in the middle of an art show….”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“A writer hopes never to offend, but if he must, pray let him offend the gods before the reviewers.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“Writing is making love under a crescent moon: I see shadows of what’s to come, and it’s enough; I have faith in what I can’t see and it’s substantiated by a beginning, a climax, an ending. And if it’s an epic novel in hand, I watch the sunrise amid the twigs and dewing grass; the wordplay is what matters.
Simply put, I’m in love, and any inconvenience is merely an afterthought.
The sun tips the horizon; the manuscript is complete. The author, full of profound exhaustion, lays his stylus aside. His labor of love stretches before him, beautiful, content, sleeping, until the next crescent moon stars the evening sky.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“Without the hard we stay too soft, and heaven is reduced to myths like life. Theology aside, it’s plain to see that God forbids we get too comfortable.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“I should have been conceived during Woodstock; it’s in my blood: that burning desire to turn an absolute on its head and see what’s underneath. I’m as random as I can be and as responsible as I should be. Attempting to fuse the two makes for interesting days.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“I have a bad habit of dropping verbal pellets to get a reaction, like Ursula LeGuin’s “A novelist’s business is lying” (that particular one got a lot of attention on Facebook), or, “Why is it that Christians hate the word ‘sex’?”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“I see an actress smoking a cigarette in an old Fred McMurray movie. She’s clever and beautiful and manipulative. I feel envy. I suddenly wish I smoked cigarettes and was as clever and beautiful and manipulative as she. I want to be that way at the restaurants I visit, as I’m walking to my car, with certain friends who might understand.
The actress has played her part well; she’s made me want to emulate her base desires if only for a while. Does that make me impressionable, a fool, or someone who will recognize the deepest secrets of her heart?
I fight hard to stay young—to keep the lines from further etching my face and hands and breasts, presumably to trick the world into believing I am young.
I’m an actress playing a part. I’m afraid to tell the truth. I fear losing those younger or becoming those older. In the presence of youth, a sort of unseen age-osmosis occurs within me. The years drop away and I don’t want to leave. It’s utterly selfish but I don’t care. After all, I’m no older than they—I’ve just been so longer. I was nineteen only yesterday and they don’t retire nineteen-year-old actresses.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“I feign knowledge of writing: that I know something about it, that I should have learned something after all these years, that I might know something tomorrow.
I read too much and write too little, or write too much and live too little. I have no classical education, no literary degree. I’m not specialized, Hugoed or geniusized; should I be writing at all?
In this whole vast world, I’m a female peon sitting here at night wondering what it is I want to say. I aim for fluidity. But no, nix that line, that thought, this life. That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? This life: it’s out of reach. I’m not sure what I’m saying anymore.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“Every once in a bestseller list, you come across a truly exceptional craftsman, a wordsmith so adept at cutting, shaping, and honing strings of words that you find yourself holding your breath while those words pass from page to eye to brain. You know the feeling: you inhale, hold it, then slowly let it out, like one about to take down a bull moose with a Winchester .30-06. You force your mind to the task, scope out the area, take penetrating aim, and . . . read.
But instead of dropping the quarry, you find you’ve become the hunted, the target. The projectile has somehow boomeranged and with its heat-sensing abilities (you have raised a sweat) darts straight towards you. Duck! And turn the page lest it drill between your eyes.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations