Scott Heim > Quotes

“It was a light that shone over our faces, our wounds and scars. It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels, basking in it. But it wasn’t, and we weren’t.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“It was Brian's blood, and for some reason I knew it was pure. No other man I'd held in my arms -and now, not even I- had blood this pure.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“He spoke so slowly, cobwebs could have formed between his words.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“Somewhere, in some shadowy bedroom of a leaf-strewn town, a father bolts the door to a child's room, then steps closer to the bed. In a neighbor's garden lurks a weed with a funny, blade-petaled flower, its poison choking the red roses. Somewhere a car is crashing; a phone is ringing in the center of night. The spider waits poised in the slipper. The bird swoops headlong into glass it thought was farther air. The strangler envisions a neighborhood of throats. The head finds the noose; the foot kicks the chair.”
― Scott Heim, We Disappear

“I hate this stinking little butt crack of a town!”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“A woman gasped. Through the open door I could see a sliver of carolers, some faces peering inside at the scattered tatters of money, some faces turned to the sky and the snow, now beginning to fall. And there, in front of them, in the room with us, stood the family, their outlines barely visible within the weight of the rooms light. It was a light that shone over our faces, our wounds and scars. It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels basking in it. But it wasn’t and we weren’t.”
― Scott Heim

“The room was darker and smelled of evergreen, as though my mother had been dreaming of trees.”
― Scott Heim, We Disappear

“ What Kate Bush is is simple: She is a classy and elegant Woman who offers us a chance to be more understanding of what might be happening in the mind of someone other than ourselves. Nurturing, insightful, graceful, and wise; you could do no better than listening to her perspective. If Modern Music has an aristocracy, Kate Bush is much more than The Queen. Kate Bush is the archetypal Mother.”
― Scott Heim, The First Time I Heard Kate Bush

“The girl was holding out her hand, bit I could only give a pathetic shrug.
I had nothing to give her. I'd finally faded away.”
― Scott Heim

“How in the world can you think a queer is cute? I mean, you can tell he’s a freak. You can just tell.” I advised Zelda that if she didn’t shut up, I’d gouge out her eyes and force her to swallow them.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin: A Novel

“Defenestration,” I said. “‘The act of throwing someone through a window.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin: A Novel

“The girl was holding out her hand, but I could only give a pathetic shrug. I had nothing to give her. I'd finally faded away.”
― Scott Heim, We Disappear

“This song came on that sounded unlike anything I had ever heard: an aggressive drum machine pattern, unusual-sounding electronic noises, and of course, on top of it all, that voice. It struck me immediately, so warm and beautiful: The song was “Running Up that Hill (A Deal with God).” It was like a soundtrack to the evening. ”
― Scott Heim, The First Time I Heard Kate Bush

“There was something deranged and distinctly midwestern about a station that programmed "The Exorcist" three days prior to Christmas.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“His voice sounded vaguely grandfather like, as if his brain were crowded with knowledge!”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“Us, on the other hand, they can't kill. But we have to live with the memory of what they do. And really, it's what they do to us that's worse.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“Although it was difficult to understand it then, what I wanted was more. For the rest of my days I would want it. I would see sex everywhere, splinters shoved into each molecule of each space, saturating everything I saw and smelled and tasted and touched.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“But he’s still here, in a way I can’t explain. Oftentimes I wonder where Coach lives, what he’s doing, whether something like prison or lynch mobs or disease hasn’t killed him. But looking back it doesn’t matter. What matters is how, for the first time in my life, I felt as if I existed for something.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“No other man I'd held in my arms--and now, not even I--had blood this pure.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“Over the years, our aversion to the place had crowded out any remaining nostalgia we’d once carried for our bedrooms, for the old oak table where we’d eaten so many breakfasts and evening suppers, even for any individual touches or signatures our mother may have left. He likely hadn’t kept all that much, anyway—I think we imagined the pieces of furniture, each picture on the wall, gradually disappearing, the way our once-clear memories had vanished to leave only the stains we couldn’t quite scrub away.”
― Scott Heim, Loam

“It was late summer, already harvest season, and the fields shuddered in the wind, the grains full and heavy as though fed with blood.”
― Scott Heim, Loam

“It was as though he’d pushed away the flowers and cards at his doorstep, turned for one last look at the world that had wronged him, and then stepped into nothingness.”
― Scott Heim, Loam

“Within seconds, he caught my eye, his stare lingering to reveal the kind of awkward, ineffable despair I’d seen so often from fellow rural gay men.”
― Scott Heim, Loam

“At that precise moment, he might have been lying on a bed in some other state with another kid like me. For all I knew, he could have been dead. That idea seemed incredibly romantic. If I’d been alone and high, my imagination would have roamed-me dressed in black, lumbering toward Coach’s open coffin, a tear on my cheek, to center a single white lily on his motionless and impeccable chest…”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“Eventually,” she said, “we’ll all get our chance to ride in a hearse, whether we want it or not.”
― Scott Heim, Loam

“No one said anything about tedium or complacency or all the vast, lost possibilities we’d once daydreamed about as children.”
― Scott Heim, Loam

“A town as small as Collingwood perceives little distinction between mysterious and menacing, and gradually, Phillip became a cause for concern.”
― Scott Heim, Loam

“I know it’s the Burneys,” Miriam said. “They’re still getting their revenge. And we all deserve it.”
― Scott Heim, Loam

“That was us.’ I told him we were the kids who’d caused the Burneys’ deaths.”
― Scott Heim, Loam

“None of us had been sleeping well, and with our mother’s encouragement, we chose the basement as our nighttime salvation.”
― Scott Heim, Loam