Eric LaRocca > Quotes

“At the end of each day, he used to ask me, “what have you done today to deserve your eyes?”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“I guess that’s what makes people do horrible things – they think whatever they’re doing isn’t nearly as bad as what somebody else will do”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“It’s because the planet is a carnivore and just wants to be fed. People want that as well. People like to eat other people.
I spent so many years forgetting I had teeth, too.”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“It’s not that I felt empty. I think all of us feel empty most of the time and we merely pretend to fill the vacuum with laughter, crying, apologies – anything to make us feel human.”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“Every family has a myth for the young to inherit – an undocumented fable passed between mouths, a grave illness to be contracted – as if the very words were a blight to infect the youth with and let them know they’re now welcome to the fold.
After all, what exactly is a family, if not a brotherhood and sisterhood afflicted with the same terminal disease?”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“I only do this because there are people out there who will do far worse to you.”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“I learned quickly that blood is not always thicker than water. Sometimes the people that care for us the most are the people we least expect”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“What have you done today to deserve your eyes?”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“I guess we all have things from our childhood we eventually have to let go of.”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“I think all of us feel empty most of the time and we merely pretend to fill the vacuum with laughter, crying, apologies – anything to make us feel human.”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“After all, what exactly is a family, if not a brotherhood and sisterhood afflicted with the same terminal disease?”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“What are you afraid of?” he asked. “Letting go, or being left with nothing to hold?”
― Eric LaRocca, We Can Never Leave This Place

“Even a carcass can carry life, so why not me?”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“when you change, the people around you start to change as well”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“I once read somewhere that, if your mind continuously returns to the same person over and over again, it means that they’re thinking of you as well.”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“Just think, everything could be different for me tomorrow. My whole life could change. I hope it does.”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“I cursed myself for being so contended, being so comfortable to remain as I once was – an insect burdened with a shell far too big for the smallness of their size.”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“What the doctors didn’t tell me was how much I would change while watching her suffer. I shouldn’t be so surprised, though. Each thing we love takes a little piece of us whether we give it willingly or not. By the time we find the person we were meant to be with, we’re a honeycombed shell of what we once were. Each person we love turns us into the strange thing we become.”
― Eric LaRocca, The Trees Grew Because I Bled There: Collected Stories

“age has a way of taxing the mind—as if it were a small penance each year for the cost of living—”
― Eric LaRocca, The Strange Thing We Become and Other Dark Tales

“I can still so distinctly recall the moment when I came to terms with that fact—when I knew unequivocally that I did not possess the same faith that my mother and father held. It was a truly frightening moment. Not only was I different from the children around me, but I was decidedly different from the people who raised me. I felt like an alien—an otherworldly creature that should be studied. In my despair, I realized what I wanted more than anything—I wanted to connect with something. I wanted to make a connection and form a bond that would last a lifetime. That desire—that indescribable itch to connect with someone, something—is fixed at the very heart of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes. Though the stories in this collection are decidedly different from one another, they are tethered by the human need to connect with someone, something else. In the collection’s titular novella, the character Agnes is desperate to find companionship in another. The novella is essentially about the lengths a person might be willing to go in order to satisfy their loved one, in order to keep their beloved from leaving.”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes

“But I'd unsettle you even more if I chose not to share with you the disturbing story I know. Your mind would invent something even more grotesque, more upsetting than my words could ever conjure.”
― Eric LaRocca, You've Lost a Lot of Blood

“Love between two people always changes who you are.”
― Eric LaRocca, You've Lost a Lot of Blood

“I think there’s a small, quiet part of you that enjoys the misery I carefully feed you each day—”
― Eric LaRocca, You've Lost a Lot of Blood

“From baby teeth to virginity, to live is to regularly suffer loss. However, I scarcely expected to love everything I've ever loved in a single moment.”
― Eric LaRocca, We Can Never Leave This Place

“Then again, aren’t those the moments when we change the most – when we’re uncomfortable?”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“All people are like that. Eager consumers of someone else’s pain. Whether they know it or not. Why deny them what they want?”
― Eric LaRocca, We Can Never Leave This Place

“And as I’m left standing there with the squeezed out remains of that dead cat, I wonder to myself, “Does it matter? Does any of this really matter?”
The answer’s no.
The answer’s always been no.”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“What have you done today to deserve your eyes?" - Zoe Cross, Things Have Gotten Worse Since The Last Time We Spoke”
― Eric LaRocca

“when you consider how our fragile bodies will break down and rot, entropy and decay claiming us before we’re nothing more than a mere human stain: a sculpture puzzle of bones, a liturgy of human anatomy that once was and will never be again.”
― Eric LaRocca, You've Lost a Lot of Blood

“Though she might have once loved me—might have cared for me, nurtured me the way I had hoped, the way I had dreamed and wanted—that opportunity was now decidedly nonexistent, considering the fact that she was dead and had been dead for several weeks when my parents first stumbled upon her corpse in a shallow ditch not far from a busy motorway.”
― Eric LaRocca, They Were Here Before Us: A Novella in Pieces