Edward Fahey > Quotes

“I miss you so much in these wee morning hours,
when the depth of the night sets my spirit free.
When the forest is dark, and there doesn’t have to be anything in the world
but the beauty I pull out of it.
I miss you throughout the day,
as I come across glories and wonders that could easily overwhelm me,
but just dull because you’re not here to enjoy them.”
― Edward Fahey, The Mourning After

“Life is about trying to find our ways back to our one shared soul. When we’re looking out at the stars, we’re looking into ourselves.”
― Edward Fahey, The Gardens of Ailana

“There comes a hush between darkness and day.
Like expectation of a caress.
A murmur of silence.
Tree crests peeked down at Paulette through slowly lifting fog. Bark felt around for its texture again. Morning gathered and drifted through mere hints; through vague hopeful nuances of ‘Just maybe’.
- From "The Gardens of Ailana" handbook for healers & mystics”
― Edward Fahey, The Gardens of Ailana

“Harvey wanted to dive into his ugliness; he intentionally reached for those long hours of soul desolation. He waited. He paced, ready to face down whatever was to come.
Paulette’s, though, busted loose uninvited, catching her completely off guard when she was already hurting, feeling crumbled, and vulnerable. When all she really wanted was some quiet gentle feelings for a change. A few flowers. Some sunshine. A way out of all that inner torment for even just a moment.
Had she had brought only nastiness out of her childhood? Hadn’t there been anything sweet she could remember instead?
As she wandered back to her cabin, searching for even a single fond memory, light faded everywhere around her.
Aw, c’mon, she thought. Everyone had some happy childhood memories. She had to have at least a couple.
How about the coloring? Children enjoy coloring; how about that? She’d spent hours and days on her art. It was as close as she could remember to having her Mamma stand over her with anything even remotely resembling approval. Her books and comics could be tales of Jesus, but coloring books had to be Old Testament because “No child’s impure hand could touch a crayon to the sweet beautiful face of our beloved Lord and savior Christ Jesus.”
So the little girl had scrunched down over Daniel in the lion’s den. Samson screaming in rage, pain, and terror as they blinded him with daggers and torches. The redder she made the flowing wounds of a man of God shot full of arrows, the richer the flames around those three men being burned in an iron box, the longer Mamma let her stay out of that closet.
- From “The Gardens of Ailana”
― Edward Fahey, The Gardens of Ailana

“[Charlie is dying:]
After what seemed a long while, but hadn’t been, Marsh gave Paulette’s hand a warm and caring squeeze. “They’re here for him,” she said.
But their heavenly visitors didn’t take him right away. They had to make room for the chaos of modern medical urgencies. To get out of the way of well-trained professionals who had dedicated their lives to holding back Heaven.
Choppers are just as noisy and turbulent as we imagine them to be. One tore in over the hills and shattered every bit of peace Charlie otherwise could have lost himself into.
In an instant the Med-Evac team was all over him. In the midst of that blatant orchestrated chaos Paulette fought to find her peace, and to hold him inside it.
“Hang on, buddy,” techs kept telling him. “Don’t go leaving us now. You just hang in there.”
But they didn’t understand, Paulette thought. It was his time.
The chopper made a horrible racket carrying him off. Marsh, Paulette, and Ailana held their peace as its winds whipped their world into a froth.
Harve’s face twisted with something that might conceivably have been rage.
Then, all of a sudden, the birds sang, as though someone had given them a cue.
“So that’s what it’s like,” Marsha said, very softly.
“The afterlife.
“My God, it’s so beautiful.”
― Edward Fahey, The Gardens of Ailana

“Forgiveness doesn’t make one person better, or the other guy smaller. Forgiving is just letting go. It’s turning back toward being what we really are.”
― Edward Fahey, The Gardens of Ailana

“The diaphanous gown of the Milky Way shifted through scattered stars and all wishes made upon them. It gathered its silky folds as her eyes adjusted to darkness through spasms of beauty and joy.
Florescent mists wandered the shadows, brushing trees softly with moon glow.”
― Edward Fahey, The Gardens of Ailana

“Darkness crept through. Shadows pried at doors, teased dull edges of recollections that never quite took hold. Memories that would have shriveled under the blinding sun of daylight. And reason.”
― Edward Fahey, The Mourning After

“Broken hearts show us we’ve grown out of one stage, by ripping us wide open for the next.
We’re forced to choose what we do with all that pain: turn it against ourselves, aim it at someone else, or tap all that power and reach higher.”
― Edward Fahey, Entertaining Naked People

“Ancient philosophers and spiritual teachers were explorers. They wanted us to be as well. They thought we should understand this physical world, but not get stuck here. For thousands of years we have shared their insights, over-analyzed and repeated their words; quoting and re-translating until all meaning has been lost. These great minds, great souls, great beings sought to be jumping off points, not merely the originators of emptied out and desiccated clichés. They wanted to be doorways, not doorstops.”
― Edward Fahey, The Gardens of Ailana

“Racism has taken over America; discrimination and misogyny are the law. The clash between our better and darker instincts slams home.
It is the year 2037. What is now referred to as “The Great Madness of ’16” has set loose moral, economic, and cultural devastation. In the once powerful United States, paranoia and hatred rage at epidemic levels.
Behind “The Great Barrier Walls”, Red State citizens suffer near-slavery and dire hunger at the hands of totalitarian leaders calling themselves the PolitiChurch. Family Values Patrols work the streets, raping, maiming, and murdering in the name of Righteousness. Children are corralled and forced to work for the state.
The world is tearing itself apart. Between those who choose to hate, in an us-against-them world; and those who find healing through helping those in need.
Oppressive governments and bullying leaders crush their followers into mindless subservience, herding them like cattle, whipping up fear and hatred against outsiders.
As one side surges into ever more disturbing and twisted violence, some counterforce leading toward caring and truth seems to be awakening in others.
In this war there can be no compromise.
Had ancients predicted these times? Must mankind destroy itself? Is there no hope?
Or is there something we’re not seeing?
- Back cover description of "The Soul Hides in Shadows”
― Edward Fahey, The Soul Hides in Shadows

“… The frayed and gritty edges of everyone’s world were being worried away by neighbors you’d never noticed until the air spilled over with the tragedy of their loss. The war had taken them or their children; killed them, lost them, torn off body parts, shipped them back brain-fried….
… Tales fell from hearts in heavy, wet tones of grief and confusion….
… Even when rare moments of relative calm and clarity crept briefly through our days, they crawled in with head hanging through that most familiar of all tunnels, our sense of loss. Each new friend seemed only to step in and announce himself with his last breath. Why hadn’t we loved him earlier when there had been more time?
That overriding sense of loss was the dismal cloud through which you viewed the world. Dreading life’s relentless advance, but knowing your locks could never keep it out….
… As the late 60’s gave in and died, and I trudged through my first year as an art student in college, even the old folks were growing up. Their World War II glories clouded over. Someone had shot the president, his brother, and a great civil rights leader, dragging us all out of our warm, snuggly innocence.
People seemed infested by life, burdened by the stifling weight of it, until we could only force shallow, labored breaths. Each new day was just an old one playing through again, a dust-laden August, a storm always riding right on top of you that never quite cut loose. It settled into your joints until they grew achy, too heavy to lift; tarring all hearts with a dark, heavy plaque. Days stuck together as walking and breathing grew tedious. Until even my bubbly sister couldn’t offer up a smile without a shadow lurking inside it. We trudged through life as our mighty nation killed our sons and broke our buddies, defending itself from skinny barefoot farmers with sticks, in rice swamps somewhere on the other side of existence, where you couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad. Some lost tiny nowhere that hadn’t even existed when you’d been a kid; when the world had been innocent and untainted. Back when Father Knew Best, Beaver’s mom fed his dad all the answers, and Annie Oakley never had to shoot to kill….
- From “Entertaining Naked People”
― Edward Fahey, Entertaining Naked People

“Cages of women. Women and girls of all ages. Lining downtown streets behind The Great Barrier Walls. Passersby prodding at them with canes, sticks, and whatever they could find. Spitting on them through the bars, as law and culture required.
“Cages of women who had disobeyed their husbands, or sons, their preachers, or some other males in their lives. One or two of them had been foolish and self-destructive enough to have reported a rapist.
“A couple of them had befriended someone higher or lower than their stations, or maybe entertained a foreigner from outside the community, or allowed someone of a lesser race into their homes. A few may have done absolutely nothing wrong but for being reported by a neighbor with a grudge.
“For the most part they had disobeyed or disrespected males.
“Watching from behind tinted and bullet-proof windows at the rear of his immaculate stretch limo, the Lord High Chancellor of PolitiChurch, grinned the sadistic grin of unholy conquest. A dark satisfaction only a deeply tarred soul could enjoy.” …
… “Caged women and young girls at major street corners in even the worst weather. Every one of them his to do with, or dispose of, as he would.
“In this world – in His world – He was God.”

- From “The Soul Hides in Shadows”

“It is the year 2037. What is now referred to as ‘The Great Electoral Madness of ’16’ had freed the darkest ignorance, isolationism, misogyny, and racial hatreds in the weakest among us, setting loose the cultural, economic, and moral destruction of America. In the once powerful United States, paranoia, distrust, and hatred now rage at epidemic levels.”
― Edward Fahey, The Soul Hides in Shadows

“Sometimes I wish I could feel more pain
so I could touch that much more beauty.”
― Edward Fahey, The Mourning After

“You have become what you are through countless lives and lessons. There is something you can offer others; if only working on your self-discipline, fighting your own baser urges.
Do that then. Do what is offered. Learn and grow as you can.
That in itself is service.”
― Edward Fahey, The Gardens of Ailana

“Paulette awoke with an ache in her heart, a grinding in her gut. If there really was a God, why would He have let anyone put a child through that? …
She had survived, but at what cost? She was an itinerant professor, living in her head, not her heart. She had broken away, but abandoned her sister; hadn’t contacted her family in years.
Paulette wondered what she was looking for in these weekend workshops. Absolution wasn’t on the curriculum. What could she possibly hope to accomplish? To be a healer you need to connect with people. You need to touch, and let yourself be touched. And not just with your hands.
Watching these nurses, she envied them their friendships. Here were real buddies truly caring about each other, taking jabs, sharing private jokes and fears. She’d never had that. Even witnessing it from across a room, or a yard, only made her feel that much more lonely.
She got along with people well enough. Agreed with whatever they said, watched their pets, helped them move from one apartment to another. But no one really knew her.
Paulette had never been flush with self-confidence. People took that as humility, but humility isn’t painful and crippling. She hadn’t yet learned that humble and self-destructive aren’t the same thing at all. They’re not even on the same team.
And now here she was at a workshop for healers. Had she come here to heal; or to be healed?
It was one of those warm, charming days that write poems about themselves, and then settle these very softly into your mind. Paulette sensed what felt like a rain-laced breeze stirring her soul; sodden, and yet beautiful; laden with both the dismal, and the promising.
- From “The Gardens of Ailana”, a fiction largely based around adults still traumatized by having been abused as children, in the name of their parents’ religion.”
― Edward Fahey, The Gardens of Ailana

“In pain and loss, we can find either meaning, or hopelessness. The choice is ours.
How we see things, how we interpret them, how we emotionally react;
these call more of the same into our lives.
We build a world for ourselves out of what we believe.
And how we choose to respond.
Whether we let it take us under,
or rise to meet it.
- From “The Soul Hides in Shadows”, a novel by Edward Fahey”
― Edward Fahey

“Sometimes everything inside us must be torn apart. Only then can we sort through to what is truly worth keeping.”
― Edward Fahey, The Gardens of Ailana

“In that moment Paulette stepped outside anything that had ever hurt her before. Harve needed her more than she needed herself.
But she had nothing to say. Nothing to offer him. She came up empty.
“I may not have shot any of those babies in safety seats, but I took out my share o’ guys in a country I started thinking we had no right bein’ in. I could tell myself they’d signed up for it, knowing they might not go home, but that just didn’t cut it after a while.” …
… “Oh, they were scumbags, alright. Other guys in my unit’d be ready to just level the kids too, cause they were getting in our way, but I said, Wait. Let me try goin’ in first. Let me come at ’em from the rear.
“Other times I just lost myself in the righteous glory of cluster bombing the hell outa those bastards.
“And for that one moment, in all the cheering and explosions it’s like all was right with the world. It was John Phillip Sousa at Disneyland.
“But then you wake up a little. You just snuffed out future generations. Maybe bad guys can have good kids if you let ’em. We’ll never know now.”
He was coming close to crying.
“And then you see all those pieces; kid parts lying everywhere.
“And their little faces.
“If they even still had faces.
“Once you finish throwing up, and then toss back a few at camp pub, your next job is to find something inside you that you can bury that under.
“And then … what? Just go on living?”
- From “The Gardens of Ailana”
― Edward Fahey, The Gardens of Ailana

“Ericka had thought of them as her glory days when she had wanted to march on every capitol; kick down the doors of the most powerfully entrenched; when she had wanted to right every wrong, and stomp out villainy everywhere. Gene had called her the “Rebel with too many causes”.
But that had been different. It was as if all that had just been a training period, mere preparation for the way she felt now. That had been student idealism. This was the pain of a grieving mom who couldn’t watch anyone else’s kid suffer.
In her short time on the planet, their sweet daughter Madie, their little Bitsie, had taught them so much. About priorities. About courage. About how they could truly love and treasure another single human life, not just hold some general, pro-active fondness for all of humanity everywhere.
In loving that tiny child; knowing all the while that they were losing her, Ericka and Gene had suffered immensely. But they had also grown. In tending to their frail, courageous little girl, Ericka had once again unleashed her inner need to help others; an essential part of her being, but now with renewed, and focused passion.
Once, when Ericka had broken down and wept as she’d had to hand her baby off for more tests, it had been little Madie who had comforted Mommy. She’d told Ericka she was glad she could do this so they could find out what was wrong with her, and then maybe other little kids wouldn’t have to hurt this way ever again.
One way or another, her mommy now would make that little life count for something.
Ericka wanted to; she needed to cram all her pain into something she could change. Someone somewhere she could actually help, but not lose in the end. She had to find causes she could pour her almost fierce, hard-charging nature into, and actually save somebody this time.
It didn’t have to be one particular disease; it could be hunger; it could be anything, but she had to get out there and do something.
Before she had fought for causes.
But now those causes would have little faces.
- A taste of my new book, "The Soul Hides in Shadows”
― Edward Fahey

“An awkward, irregular moon, like a squeezed-out teardrop, or something caught while falling, hung frozen in place over Paulette.
Trees whispered, though she saw none of them stirring. She felt her deeper heart calling....
... Her eyes ceded control, opening to those pulsing glows and darting spheres that had been greeting her recent nights in the woods. ... High noon was for those who could only see “stuff.” Night was for those of a more magical nature. For those who loved mystery. Beyond the world of dense physical forms is a realm that flows everywhere unbroken.
Whatever these lights were, they thrived in that world. One of the glowing forms drew closer now, almost as though taking a look at her. But then almost immediately it moved on again; going about its business, whatever that might have been.
Paulette thought of Mary. Perhaps the only person she had ever truly loved. Can the spirit of someone released too soon from life wander the forest? Is that what these were; were they spirits? Could Mary’s be wandering happy somewhere until her time came and her place in Heaven was ready for her?
If there even was a Heaven.
If there was a God who cared and understood; who let you in even after you had taken your own life.
“Oh God, if you exist,” Paulette prayed in passionate silence, “Please give sweet Mary a rest.”
One tree stirred, and one tree only.
- From "The Gardens of Ailana”
― Edward Fahey

“I no more try to outline the world and lives of the characters in my books than I would attempt to outline my own life. These guys live and breathe. I have had readers tell me they dream about them. I just start a few "fictional" characters going, and then watch how they develop and reveal their own lives. Fully prepared to lose a few of them along the way, move scenes and chapters around, and head off to explore something they themselves find suddenly interesting.
I do not keep catalogs of notes on them because that may be confining and force them into cubbyholes they do not want to stay in. There are many layers and twists through each of our lives and personalities, and if this cannot be said of those who live in books, then these book people have not come fully alive.
If I am not startled and thrilled every few chapters by a sudden blast of "Wow! I did NOT see THAT coming!", then I do not see how readers could find these stories anywhere near as exciting and full of surprises as they always have.
I thrill to going back from the beginning to rewrite everything because someone has just popped in who shakes everything loose. And when I reach the end of first draft, I fool myself if I pretend to know what the story is about, or where it will be taking us. The characters are just getting warmed up.
- Edward Fahey”
― Edward Fahey

“One person reaches his hand only to slap someone down. The other reaches out to lift him up. One slams doors while the other opens them. One digs ever deeper into his anxiety, his fears, and his anger; while the other digs deeper into courage.
“It can be springtime in one heart while winter in another. Even as these two may be standing right next to each other, one feels the fresh budding life of a new springtime while the other suffers only the harsh, cracking iciness of endless winter."
- From "The Soul Hides in Shadows”
― Edward Fahey, The Soul Hides in Shadows

“Let go of the past.
Open to forever.
Hearts can heal.
Inside them is that which can never be broken.”
― Edward Fahey, The Gardens of Ailana

“Some folks live lives that are complete and total shit. But that’s all they know, so it’s home for them. They can’t see things being any different, so don’t mess with what they got going. Pile it on; they can take it.
What they can’t see, because they don’t want to, is that things could get better; they could step out of it. It wouldn’t take much more than just seeing they can.
But that’s scary, ’cause it’s so unreliable. They can always count on shit coming at them; but is hope always gonna be there when they need it?”
― Edward Fahey, The Gardens of Ailana

“Paulette had never been flush with self-confidence. People took that as humility, but humility isn’t painful and crippling. She hadn’t yet learned that humble and self-destructive aren’t the same thing at all. They’re not even on the same team. - From "The Gardens of Ailana" handbook for healers & mystics”
― Edward Fahey, The Gardens of Ailana

“That time had come to be known as “The Great Madness of ’16”.
A miracle of unholiness when the people rose up,
demanding their own annihilation in the most unconscionable ways possible,
each stage more degrading than its predecessor.
“The Great Madness of ’16”;
when the voices of ignorance roared.
- From “The Soul Hides in Shadows” by Edward Fahey”
― Edward Fahey, The Soul Hides in Shadows

“After finishing 1st draft of a novel, I have the characters, dialogue, scenes, and a plotline. I used to think this meant I knew where the story was going, and what the book was about.
I have learned over the years, this ain’t so.
As I work through its 2nd draft, characters start to nudge each other. The story itself takes its first soft and shallow breath, and one could imagine he hears a little bit of a heartbeat. Passions deepen, and emotional threads start to weave through what had earlier just been little more than a sequence of events.
On the 3rd run through, the characters stand tall. Some break free of my earlier concepts of what they were all about, what they wanted, how they related to each other, and where they were going.
From then on, THEY set the pace, and I do my best to honor them in becoming what THEY choose to be.
From then on, my friends; we have a story!

By the end of the 3rd draft, I have enough of an idea of where the characters are going, and how their passions empower the story, or tear it apart, that I can start cutting away, and cutting away, anything that isn’t that.
Until we reach the point where there is not a single word left anywhere in the book, that isn’t a vital, dynamic, organic contributor to the living whole.”
― Edward Fahey

“The back of the church was raised up from the ground. Tossed in among its supports were what looked like moldering bones.
My heart ached so much for these poor souls, neglected even after death, I turned away to head back, but managed only a few burdened steps.
I drew up abruptly and froze.
An old, worn marker, standing off by itself, grabbed at my heart.
It was Edgar Alan Poe.
He fit in so perfectly there. Maybe I did, too. His sorrow and pain ate through me as I stood, head lowered. Can’t even death let us step away from our darkness?
It was like he was scratching a warning into the dirt with his finger, and meant it specifically for me. Don’t wait around for sermons to wash you clean, he seemed to say, for death or drugs to close your eyes. God won’t come roaring in with fresh troops to drive away the darkness we’ve walled our own souls up in. He didn’t put us there; we’ll have to dig ourselves out.
I looked at my own life as I stood there, feeling buried alive, like some of his characters.
But unlike his characters I had caught a flash of hope.”
― Edward Fahey, Entertaining Naked People

“As unprincipled billionaires bought up all forms of media so as to ensure their grip on the gullible; as popular radio mouths grew wealthy spewing hatred; ordinary citizens learned to look elsewhere for truth.
Weaker spirits followed along as small-minded preachers told them to hate gays. They let news commentators tell them to hate Muslims; let their Imams tell them to hate Westerners.
It was really all the same. That which stirs the heart may stir it from any direction; for or against any cause. High or low; meaningless or vital; the heart flits from passion to passion, and the weaker man follows aimlessly.
- From "The Soul Hides in Shadows”
― Edward Fahey, The Soul Hides in Shadows