Patrick Downes > Quotes

“You want to pass, or miss a turn. You have to move, though. When you do, you’re suddenly weak. Zugzwang.”
― Patrick Downes, Fell of Dark

“Eulogy:
He thought. He wrote. He read. He ran and drank milk. A boy made of milk and concrete. He was cut in two. He bled and died.
A stranger smart enough to steal a child and lock a door took the boy's life. The man cut him in half, then chewed him up. Blood and rubble.
Even though the boy was dead, he dreamed up a girl with skin and hair of light taking care of him, holding his hand, He dreamed the girl gave him a kiss, and he wondered if the kiss would send him back to the world. It didn't. It kept him under. He sleeps in the box with the girl made from light.
We have to forget him so we can take him with us.”
― Patrick Downes, Fell of Dark

“I want to feel normal. I want to be normal.”
― Patrick Downes, Fell of Dark

“He thought. He wrote. He read. He ran and drank milk and concrete. He was cut into two. He bled. He died.”
― Patrick Downes

“So I stay in bed, thinking, not even reading. I write poems. I cry. I sleep. I become one with the bed, rooted. I'm sort of a mushroom.”
― Patrick Downes, Fell of Dark

“Nature has always been and always will be, as far as my tiny brain can understand, miraculous. Except, nature won't last because the world won't.”
― Patrick Downes

“Write more, read more, think more”
― Patrick Downes, Fell of Dark

“My invisible wounds. I have no answer, no proof I bleed. But I bleed. Sure as I love my mother and you, I bleed.”
― Patrick Downes

“I'll write and write, still my greatest comfort--.”
― Patrick Downes, Fell of Dark

“The house fell into disrepair. Little things at first - dripping faucets and loose doors and scummy walls, a blackgreen bathroom, the annoyances and blemishes and dirt and grime people put up with without much complaining, aware that it should be better, but with no real motivation to keep up, especially when at the center of the home there's a sense of hopelessness.”
― Patrick Downes, Island

“An ancient fruit tree of some kind, an apple or cherry, grows in the park a little way from here. Every March, it blooms. Ten thousand pink and white flowers bloom and shake for a week. Then, all the flowers fall, and for a while the tree stands in its own memories.”
― Patrick Downes, Fell of Dark

“I had these books: The Pilgrim's Progress and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Catcher in the Rye, which I thought would have a bad ending and did. Totally boring and meaningless. Very human.”
― Patrick Downes, Fell of Dark

“Is the definition of a pessimist a person who only sees what he hasn't got but wants? Would an optimist never see the empty space?
Or is there some other detail I'm leaving out? Is it more complicated?
I don't know. It isn't always bad to see the empty space, is it? Isn't it all right to see both, the filled space and the empty space? You could be in either. I have to try and see everything.”
― Patrick Downes, Fell of Dark

“I'd wanted to understand how my father came to fall, but I don't think it matters anymore. Or that it matters beyond the more important truth: that my father is gone, released from himself - and that we, Key and I, are free.

I feel strange. I feel something I may not have felt in a long time, if ever. It feels warm. It feels easy. It feels like control.

Light streams through the windows. My father's ghosts have disappeared. And I'm breathing, steadily, slowly.

I'm at peace.

That's what this is. It's peace.”
― Patrick Downes, Island

“Husbands and wives help each other survive. They hold each other in their hearts. I've given this a lot of thought, Janet.”
― Patrick Downes, Fell of Dark

“Love, nothing is harder than love, nothing wants or asks more from us. Love gives us everything that's good in us.”
― Patrick Downes, Fell of Dark

“There are stacks of books everywhere, and the shelves where books live are all bowed. They'll collapse at some point.”
― Patrick Downes, Fell of Dark

“Perfection should be my naked body. Who says it isn't? When I am naked, I am Nest, exactly Nest. I'm seventeen, and I'll never be seventeen again.

Simple perfection, raw perfection --”
― Patrick Downes, Ten Miles One Way

“My mother had raised me to be a gentleman. I carry bags when I can. I open doors. I stand when a woman enters the room. I offer my seat. I walk on the outside.”
― Patrick Downes, Fell of Dark

“When you play board games, you learn about your mind and other people's minds. You find out whether or not you take risks, whether or not you're a short- or long-range thinker, whether or not you like to wager.”
― Patrick Downes, Fell of Dark