Steven Elkins > Quotes

“A breathtaking tree. My tree, as Andy used to proudly proclaim. Three hundred years old, as wide as it was tall, with an enormous trunk and heavy, twisting limbs as thick as barrels. Crowned by a broad, leafy canopy reaching outward and upward and spreading north, south, east and west. The lower limbs were carpeted with hanging moss and drooping ferns and they skimmed the ground - massive, crooked, arthritic fingers gesturing come hither, a tree begging to be climbed. A tree slowly sculpted over the decades by strong and unceasing hilltop winds. At once beautiful and grotesque, a tree beloved by a little boy whose dreams of looking down at the world from above the clouds would never come true.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“The mouth looked humanoid, as well, but the teeth were twice as big as those you might find inside the mouth of a Budweiser Clydesdale. So big you'd need twine to floss between them. And they needed flossing, badly. Although the creature connected to those teeth didn't seem too concerned about its own dental hygiene and, as its horrendous body odor clearly indicated, bathing wasn't too high up on its list of priorities, either.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“Andy’s first baby word was, ‘see.’ He spoke it like it was a question... 'see?' He pointed at something when he said it. Willie was never sure what he was looking at. But I knew. It was the light bulb over the sink. I just knew. A mother always knows. Andy wanted us to see the light. Oh, my goodness, how he loved to talk and talk and talk. I can still hear his sweet, raspy voice in my ear.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“The Caribou Cafe and Pub had a dance floor with a drain in the middle of it. But it had been many years since anybody danced there, except for an occasional sloppy pirouette off a bar stool en route to the toilet.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“It was the purest love any being ever felt for another. A love unspoiled by higher intellect, human frailty, foolishness and foible, limerence or lust or neurotic obsession. She never forgot her boy, never stopped longing for him. Her heart forever broken after she abandoned him while he slept.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“Blessing in disguise he didn't believe me, Andy. Truth gets out, they hunt you down. Set a trap. Bait it with a thick, juicy ribeye. Medium rare. Big baked potato on the side. Maybe a salad. You know - for roughage? Keeps you regular. They capture you. Open you up and study your organs. While you're still alive. Vivisection. Nasty business. When they're done they stop your heart and put your brain in a jar. Drain off your blood. Sell samples for scientific study. Skin you and tan your hide. They boil the meat off your skeleton. Stuff you full of sawdust. Pop marbles in your sockets. Pose you inside a diorama like some magnificent beast behind glass in a museum. They do that to all the great apes. But not to you. I'll never let them do it. No way in hell. Not to my boy. Nope. Not to my child.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“It was a primitive instinct connecting the two of them, some shared genetic memory born thirteen thousand years earlier when proto-dogs and human beings joined in their co-evolution, started living together and forged powerful emotional bonds. The boy had seen wolves before, but never a domesticated Basset hound. He knew wolves could be dangerous. But, for whatever reason, he trusted the dog.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“That the local Plasma Center sat only three doors south of Anton’s Package Liquors was a demonstration of facility in urban planning so sublime and so savored by the clientele of both businesses, if one looked closely enough, a distinct path between the two doorways could be detected where the sidewalk had been worn smooth, polished like marble.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“It was only his imagination, but he was convinced he could see his beard growing back, the whiskers slowly emerging from his pores, twisting up towards the light, like in some speeded up, time-lapse sequence in a boring, sixteen millimeter educational film of grass growing or flowers blooming.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“You are bound to your mother and your father. And they right back to you. And those ties are the strongest and most powerful in the world. Invisible as they may be.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“The brothel had been boarded up for many years, but everything inside remained eerily undisturbed. Left exactly as it was the moment the debauchery was rudely interrupted for the final time. Half-smoked cigars and cigarette butts still littered the ashtrays, but the alcohol had evaporated long ago, leaving the shot glasses and the high-ball tumblers and the beer mugs and the brandy snifters bone-dry and empty, robbed of their spirits.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“And so it began. The seed had been planted there all along. He was born with it. But it was dormant, fast asleep, deep inside the frontal lobe of his brain's left hemisphere. It woke up when it was ready, not one moment before, and it started to grow. And the wild child would eventually learn his ABC's and how to count to ten. And he would acquire thousands of words and learn how to puzzle them together into meaningful speech. And he would one day come to master, like it was second nature, all the elegant behaviors and customs and protocols and etiquettes separating him from the lower forms of life. Like standing in line and waiting your turn because patience is a virtue. And chewing with your mouth closed because it is rude to let others see the awful mess inside. And watching the clock because they told him he should never be late.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“Andy joined the line, stared at the ground and tried to disappear. He hated lines, but waiting wasn't the problem. Andy was ashamed of his height. He always stood out in a crowd. Out and up. Way up. At seven feet six and one-half inches, it was impossible for Andy to lay low, which had always been his inclination.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“In 1967, at the age of nine, Andy Lennox was six feet five and one-half inches tall. Three years earlier, as a six-year old, he had already gone through puberty. Faye was frightened by his transformation. She stopped giving him baths, instructing him to instead perform the task himself after his scrotum became enlarged. He was saddened when they no longer shared bonding time together. And didn't understand when she told him the changes in his body were happening because he was becoming a man.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“If by some miracle Buster Freitag could live a long enough life, say two hundred years, there might be time enough for him to lose all his appendages and extremities. Seven more fingers, nine more toes, hands, feet, arms, legs, his genitals, his nose and, of course, the one ear still attached. Reduced down to only head and torso, he might find gainful employment in some circus sideshow, billed as the Human Bratwurst. At least until the final coup de grace, when he would be decapitated in a jealous rage incident, courtesy of a machete wielded by his jilted lover, The Bearded Lady.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“Andy liked to juxtapose contradictory flavors. Call it the cuisine of shock and awe. He craved both the treacly and the brackish and, if at all possible, one right after the other. It captivated him how the savory enhanced the sweet. He adored the way the piquant stung his tongue, especially when he could comfort his palate immediately with a bite of the insipid or the zestless. He salt and peppered his cantaloupe, though it had been three years since he had tasted any. He would drizzle honey on broccoli. He once put tabasco sauce on a glazed donut. Sifting through the garbage behind an Italian restaurant a week earlier, he scarfed down a slice of moldy tiramisu with half a tin of anchovies dumped on top.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“He thought he was dreaming them. Sounds faint, but distinct, echoing through the ventilation shafts and resonating through the plumbing and the sinks and the bathtubs and the toilets. The screams, the crazed, cackling laughter, the anguished moaning and the inconsolable weeping. And now Dennis was finally going to get a first-hand look, and see the Woodhaven basement for himself. And he would soon realize he did not dream them. Those terrible sounds were real. And the rumors were true.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man

“She carried him down into a lush cavern. It was a sprawling acre and a half, the floor a beautiful rolling meadow of wildflowers split by a zigzag freshwater stream which was fed by five cascade waterfalls streaming down in roaring torrents from towering one hundred fifty foot sheer walls. There were mineral-rich hot springs and abundant vegetation. Giant ferns, mushrooms, heather, blueberry, alpine strawberry, huckleberry. All thriving in the warm, wet air generated by the nearly constant emission of steam hissing out of geothermal vents. Eerie lava rock formations sprouted up throughout the grotto floor. Curving, organic shapes forming alcoves and niches and cozy recesses offering solitude to whomever, or whatever, required it.”
― Steven Elkins, Nonesuch Man