Yannick Murphy > Quotes

“You will always see less as you grow older, otherwise you would not want to go on.”
― Yannick Murphy, Here They Come

“We dream of him and in the morning we tell each other our dreams where he is living with us again, fixing salads, whistling, standing in doorways. Our mother tells us there was a time before they thought to marry when he wrote her every day, long letters with a date and a time in the upper right corner, the hour always late and the pages sometimes stained purple by wine that had spilled as he lifted the glass and drank while he wrote … Our mother says not to throw the letters out, they are all that’s left of the love she’ll never feel again.”
― Yannick Murphy, Here They Come

“I am happy to see him on the couch, his huge feet on the arm, dirtying the cloth. I am happy to hear him stomping upstairs across the floorboards and whipping towels at his sisters after he has showered. I am happy to hear him screaming for no reason, bounding down the stairs, reaching the bottom and wildly petting Nelly, shaking her head back and forth, and calling her a good girl. I think how it doesn’t matter who shot my son. My son is back.”
― Yannick Murphy, The Call

“Get the moon to phase with you. The tide to lap at your door. Call it Rose or Aunty, but never what it is.”
― Yannick Murphy, Here They Come

“If caught wearing white and you stain, stand and spread out your skirt, let the boys read into it shapes like blots of ink.”
― Yannick Murphy, Here They Come

“Her fingers are still cool, like ivory on piano keys and they are that pale and he looks at her face, drawn and pale too.”
― Yannick Murphy, Here They Come

“A child born with a weak eye can put a patch over the strong eye and train the weak eye to do what the strong eye already can.”
― Yannick Murphy, This Is the Water

“… but she sits almost asleep, her head drooping to the left, out toward the sky, as if the sky were some stranger’s shoulder to lean upon throughout a trip on a train.”
― Yannick Murphy, Here They Come

“She looks like what fishermen don’t want after hours spent cutting debris out of their nets.”
― Yannick Murphy, Here They Come

“But she is not looking down, but looking up maybe, some kind of fortune teller who can read futures in passing dark clouds.”
― Yannick Murphy, Here They Come

“THOUGHTS ON RIDE HOME: If my levels get too high, if they talk too much, then put me out of my misery and burn me on a pyre, that’s how I want to go. Don’t bother with a backhoe to try and dig the hole. Take down the trees to build the pyre off our land. Let the Newfoundlands have my bones. Let them walk the property drooling with my femur between their massive jaws. I am renewable energy.”
― Yannick Murphy, The Call

“I look at his bloodshot eyes and wonder if it affects what he sees, everything covered by a veil of red lace that his hands can’t ever lift.”
― Yannick Murphy, Here They Come

“My mother still thinks of things to do for him. Light church candles, name a star, send money to somewhere.”
― Yannick Murphy, Here They Come

“You sometimes feel that reading books is the only way you can think, as if the reading occupied one part of your brain and this allowed the other part to go free and become more active. You need that time to read in order to think. That’s all there is to it.”
― Yannick Murphy, This Is the Water

“… she looks at herself, at her bloodshot eyes, the small veins like red scattered roads and branching streams.”
― Yannick Murphy, Here They Come