V.S. Kemanis > Quotes

“She’d discovered the beginnings of her adult person, her preference for lucidity, prudence, responsibility, and restraint. Tranquility could be eked from boredom, results from hard work.”
― V.S. Kemanis, Malocclusion, tales of misdemeanor

“Her immediate impulse was one of self-preservation. She was tied up in this somehow, she didn’t know why or how, but there was something waiting for her on the other side of this crowd.”
― V.S. Kemanis, Thursday's List

“Rage and despair shook her for minutes or hours. She was unaware of the passage of time. Finally spent, she retreated inward and collapsed onto the floor in a fetal position, the letter in shreds around her. The room had grown dark. Like a gentle snowfall, the cold mantle of an unbearable silence descended.”
― V.S. Kemanis, Homicide Chart

“Karen merely nodded a hello, feeling slightly apart despite the utter normalcy of the morning, feeling, for the first time, that she belonged to a secret, shameful society ruled by aberrant desire and behavior.”
― V.S. Kemanis, Malocclusion, tales of misdemeanor

“No name, no number, but she remembered him, his eyes the color of shadow, his arms the shape of oblivion, a voice lulling her, beckoning her into the surf. His name was Brad or Tom or Steve … or was it Rick? Ten years ago his voice had been the same, supplicating and tender with the promise of fairytale.”
― V.S. Kemanis, Everyone But Us, tales of women

“Pale blue. A vast empty expanse of it lay between them and the searing white disk hovering overhead. Nothing else. It could have been painted there, ripped from a paper ceiling, proving they didn’t exist. None of it did. Best to lean back in the seat and feel the wind and hope to catch sight of something, an eagle, a cloud, a slight incline, a tumble weed, a curve in the highway.”
― V.S. Kemanis, Malocclusion, tales of misdemeanor

“Distance and time and a whitewashed mind hadn’t kept a child from growing, from existing, from demanding a place on this earth.”
― V.S. Kemanis, Homicide Chart

“Karen led her guest into the kitchen where she’d laid the table with flowers and her prettiest stoneware in neat place settings amidst good coffee and cake smells, with a hope that now seemed transparent for its desire to impress with simplicity and goodness: a childlike tea party dream.”
― V.S. Kemanis, Malocclusion, tales of misdemeanor

“Her instincts were valid, another instinct told her.”
― V.S. Kemanis, Everyone But Us, tales of women

“No one is on this road, she thought. No one but us. Everyone knows this isn’t the place to be at three o’clock on a summer afternoon. Everyone but us.”
― V.S. Kemanis, Everyone But Us, tales of women

“The reality and what it meant was slowly dawning: the betrayal, deception, and omission. Clandestine meetings. Evasion under questioning. In hindsight, Dana and Evan picked out the clues they’d missed, reevaluated the moments they’d been led astray, and tiptoed over possible theories as to how they’d been duped.”
― V.S. Kemanis, Homicide Chart

“This congregation of displaced persons had been brought together at a moment in time, in this room, by a few irrevocable mistakes of the past—those acts of rage, greed, lust, and revenge that ran like silent films in their heads, the actors driven by emotions that had gone cold and were now inexplicable.”
― V.S. Kemanis, Forsaken Oath

“Maybe,' she said, 'we should just enjoy our fantasies for what they are, without making them into lost opportunities.”
― V.S. Kemanis, Dust of the Universe, tales of family