L. Shosty > L.'s Quotes

“She’s at the Fall carnival because this is the South, and the South fetes the bleaker months because it has a heart more for the terrible beating of black wings than the song of a whippoorwill.”
― L. Joseph Shosty, Wizards for the Immediate Cheddar

“Sometimes words were useless. It was the deed that would be remembered, anyway, long after the words had faded into the wind.”
― L. Joseph Shosty, Wizards for the Immediate Cheddar

“My mother said she had me late in life because of Richard Nixon.”
― L. Joseph Shosty, Wizards for the Immediate Cheddar

“When you no longer look like yourself anymore, that’s your body saying it’s time to punch out.”
― L. Joseph Shosty, Gomes & A Murder of Confessions

“Just get me someplace safe, Miss Chase, and I’ll be happy to think of a new lie to tell you.”
― L. Joseph Shosty, Gomes & A Murder of Confessions

“I occasionally entertain guests in my office. There are too many things to do and see for them to spare more than a few moments for their professor. They certainly don’t have time for tea, and that’s a shame. I will not give in to cynicism and call them shallow, but they do concern themselves with trifles more than perhaps they should. They are so quick to be done with their education and out into the world they don’t stop to enjoy the pleasure of learning. I frequently hear the word “life” bandied about, and I wonder when they leave if they’ll truly know how to live at all.”
― L. Joseph Shosty, One of Us, Old Boy

“The waitress came by with a pot of black coffee. She was a smallish woman, about forty, still had some of her looks left, but she had a hardness to her face. Money and bad men were the only things that left that much stone in a woman. I nudged my cup in her direction, and she served her purpose in life.”
― L. Joseph Shosty, Herbie's Diner

“And you will spend the rest of your life wondering if I have disciples to avenge me. Hire your tasters, Burbesh. Until the Master of the Sleeps comes for you, you’ll never know a taste of anything that has not touched another’s lips first. You’ll never sleep in a bed that has not been first tossed for vipers. You’ll never sit in a chair that has not been tested for poisoned barbs in its cushions. You shall never see a bath drawn for you that you will not at first fear is acid. And you’ll never have another dream where my face is not grinning at you from the shadows.” -- From "Morality for Alchemists and Thieves”
― L. Joseph Shosty

“The gravedigger knew a fine trick. When the worms looked unhappy he would leave his place in the mausoleum and go up into the sunshine. He would go empty-handed, but when he returned, with him came a most exquisite corpse. The worms would rejoice, and they would feast upon the corpse until they were fat and could feast no more. The young would come with the old to see this trick and glory in it. No worm knew where the gravedigger got his corpses, but they were always succulent and nourishing. They praised the gravedigger’s generosity. -- From "Worms”
― L. Joseph Shosty, Swallow the Evil

“Lionel was filled with awful remorse. He asked where had Thomas been last seen, and the boy told him he was headed for the church. Lionel nodded and went home to fetch his shotgun. Throughout the crisis he had done no violence, preferring to preach the sanity of pacifism to the flock. This was different. This was a requirement of the father to the son. He prayed over the shotgun while Darla wailed with the children in the living room. He got in his truck and drove to the church. -- From "The South Fork Penance”
― L. Joseph Shosty, Swallow the Evil

“The full moon, well risen in a cloudless eastern sky, covered the high solitude with its light. We are not conscious of daylight as that which displaces darkness. Daylight, even when the sun is clear of clouds, seems to us simply the natural condition of the earth and air. When we think of the downs, we think of the downs in daylight, as with think of a rabbit with its fur on. Stubbs may have envisaged the skeleton inside the horse, but most of us do not: and we do not usually envisage the downs without daylight, even though the light is not a part of the down itself as the hide is part of the horse itself. We take daylight for granted. But moonlight is another matter. It is inconstant. The full moon wanes and returns again. Clouds may obscure it to an extent to which they cannot obscure daylight. Water is necessary to us, but a waterfall is not. Where it is to be found it is something extra, a beautiful ornament. We need daylight and to that extent it us utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need. When it comes, it serves no necessity. It transforms. It falls upon the banks and the grass, separating one long blade from another; turning a drift of brown, frosted leaves from a single heap to innumerable flashing fragments; or glimmering lengthways along wet twigs as though light itself were ductile. Its long beams pour, white and sharp, between the trunks of trees, their clarity fading as they recede into the powdery, misty distance of beech woods at night. In moonlight, two acres of coarse bent grass, undulant and ankle deep, tumbled and rough as a horse's mane, appear like a bay of waves, all shadowy troughs and hollows. The growth is so thick and matted that event the wind does not move it, but it is the moonlight that seems to confer stillness upon it. We do not take moonlight for granted. It is like snow, or like the dew on a July morning. It does not reveal but changes what it covers. And its low intensity---so much lower than that of daylight---makes us conscious that it is something added to the down, to give it, for only a little time, a singular and marvelous quality that we should admire while we can, for soon it will be gone again.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“We learned a new way to consume each other, without the need for any drug or conflict. We smothered each other in kisses and dreams of our future and poetic wishes that ended in moans. Our addictions shifted to our obsession with us.”
― Kenya Wright, Flirting with Chaos

“The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“...Under the veil of Mythology lies a solid Reality.”
― Sabine Baring-Gould, The Book of Werewolves

“The old guys I've been around all say the same thing," Achilles said. "If you're in the business long enough, you'll eventually take that one job which haunts you. I think I've found mine, Swiss. I really do.”
― L. Joseph Shosty, Operational Costs

“They drank and celebrated making it this far, for that was the only thing worth celebrating.”
― L. Joseph Shosty, Trouble My Bones

“He eventually sloughed off his mortal coil with an efficiency that was both surprising yet indicative of his nature.”
― L. Joseph Shosty, Trouble My Bones