Michael F Simpson > Quotes

“The mirror looked at me, and hated what it saw.”
― Michael F Simpson, Hypnagogia

“I looked around again, quickly left, quickly right. There was someone around me. Something. In the shop windows, faint and ghostly faces gazing out. Directly at me no matter which side of the empty space I looked upon. Once again the darkness and the impossible distance obstructed my ability to discern any detailed features, leaving me alone with only vague ideas of the inhuman human form.”
― Michael F Simpson, Hypnagogia

“Glass always drew my eyes, or my mind. That reflection — the mirror, and the Other Body inside it. I wanted to turn off my mind but it was impossible. So many terrible, monstrous things buzzed around inside of it like electric knife blades, cutting, cutting, cutting.”
― Michael F Simpson, Hypnagogia

“Happiness is merely the liminal space between ignorance and understanding.”
― Michael F Simpson, Hypnagogia

“I just wanted to sleep. I wanted to sleep forever — especially if there would be no dreams.”
― Michael F Simpson, Hypnagogia

“I screamed last night, and felt the sharp, reflective elements boring into my skull. I felt such deep, intense devotions, the kind of emotions it is only possible to experience in nightmares. But I was not dreaming, I could not sleep. I was wide awake. In pain. Debating with my own reflection which one of us should own our veins.”
― Michael F Simpson, Hypnagogia

“And the wind is not wind, it is the breath of refracted light, chilling me with its memories.”
― Michael F Simpson, Hypnagogia

“I want to see, I want to see, I want to see you dying.”
― Michael F Simpson, Hypnagogia

“Bats eating moths, or bats eating bats, it was all the same — beauty devoured beauty.”
― Michael F Simpson, Hypnagogia

“The pane of glass separating me from my family. I didn’t think they could understand, even now. It wasn’t possible. I said one thing and it became something else. They said one thing and maybe that became something else too. Refractions of voice bouncing from torment to torment. I wasn’t right for this world.”
― Michael F Simpson, Hypnagogia

“Words being spoken with my mouth, my face, yet the brain behind them had no idea of their content or meaning. The un-remembered noise reverberated within the cavities of my ears, and I could feel it despite my confusion about the rest of me. I needed to get out, now. And I was taking the faceless man with me.”
― Michael F Simpson, Hypnagogia

“This could have gone on for years. Me having my brain torn apart by sensations, thoughts and feelings of somatic torment at the hands of an Other Body in its mirror. Family and friends wanting to help — I assumed that was so, at least — but failing in the specifics. This glass between us making the seen, unseen, the seeing, unseeing. Making the outspoken voiceless and the listening deaf. Making the caring confused and the cared for distraught. Like an exile trapped in a labyrinth of glass panes splitting me off from my society and my tribe, no matter which direction I turned, no matter which impossible hallway I travelled down I was always separated from reflections of some other world where people could be happy, and safe, and understand their own inner workings well enough to voice them in the form of words.”
― Michael F Simpson, Hypnagogia

“That was the strange thing about the communicative abilities of living creatures. Real language had no real meaning. As long as the two souls in communion with one another had a mutual understanding of the way things were in the universe. That was enough to understand.”
― Michael F Simpson, Hypnagogia

“Acting is my whole life. It’s this one thing I am good at. But what if it isn’t good at me? I don’t look like an actor, actors are supposed to be beautiful. I look like me. And that isn’t good enough.”
― Michael F Simpson, Hypnagogia

“I realised then that I didn’t want to block out the sunlight. I wanted to block out the world.”
― Michael F Simpson, Hypnagogia

“Before he could speak his mind, eight black psychopathic needles came out of my mouth, sharpened and clean. They pulled at my already weakened jaw and drew out an abyssal creature, angry, great and strong.”
― Michael F Simpson, Sempiternal

“He flicked a switch, and the voltage screamed as it ran through my soul.”
― Michael F Simpson, Sempiternal

“Moths are prettier than butterflies.”
― Michael F Simpson, Sempiternal

“How have you been sleeping? I would like to assume poorly. That makes my job easier. See, you did not know it before, but every time you sleep I am watching you. And those horrible dreams you tried so hard to forget about, yet could not get out of your head? You are welcome.”
― Michael F Simpson, Sempiternal

“Of course, if you broke a glass orb, and put it back together in the wrong order, you wouldn’t have an orb anymore. That’s how his fragmentation worked. My dreams became illogical but they also made perfect sense for as long as he kept me in his realm. If that which is narratively flawed makes perfect sense, he has control. He could twist the fragments into Heaven or Hell and either would work.”
― Michael F Simpson, Sempiternal

“It could be seconds, minutes, hours — weeks, months, or yes, even years. It could be no time at all — or indeed all of Time.”
― Michael F Simpson, Sempiternal

“Even though I needed to know more if I wanted to continue attending the church, the multitude of different forces living in my brain were more powerful than the small, hidden part of the brain that actually represented me.”
― Michael F Simpson, Sempiternal

“Loudmouth turned his head and pointed at me, with wide eyes that weren’t ready for an afterlife.”
― Michael F Simpson, Sempiternal

“Eating became an automatic action. Take the food. Place it between the jaws. Tear it apart. Drag it deep into the abyss to acidify, to dissolve, to delete. Such violence to maintain life. In the end, it’s how all things are sustained. One thing must be destroyed for another to grow.”
― Michael F Simpson, Sempiternal

“Because all of our thoughts are just encrypted messages carried through electrical pathways by weird, deformed insects in our brains. It’s only when you start to hear them drilling caverns in your skull that you realise how crazy this is, and you learn what true insanity is — pure, human conscience.”
― Michael F Simpson, Sempiternal

“Emotions were confusing to me before, always so entangled in my clockwork, never working as intended. With her, this confusion somehow made sense. I felt as though I was supposed to have this messy ball of emotions when I held onto her.”
― Michael F Simpson, Sempiternal

“So when you’re alone, and you’re hurting, and you open your heart, something will hear you. Because the thing that hears your prayer is hurting too.”
― Michael F Simpson, Sempiternal

“Through the holes in the walls, I could see the world. The whole beautiful world. White clouds passed the makeshift windows and pulled across the dark blue sky, and with it the sun and stars burning bright. Crows flew past and cried out to me. Fireflies swarmed around my head. And none of it mattered without the quiet girl.”
― Michael F Simpson, Sempiternal

“The thing from inside my soul started to sing.

It sounded like suicide.”
― Michael F Simpson, Sempiternal

“Words will always make more sense to the writer than the reader. It just means that, even though the reader may have suffered, they haven’t suffered like the writer.”
― Michael F Simpson, Sempiternal