Amanda Hudgins

“Spill enough blood on it, and the earth was bound to go strange.”
― Lee Mandelo, The Woods All Black

“Growing up, I believed in all sorts of fantastic things. Ghosts and aliens, monsters that brought on nightmares and fed on fear. The fantasies materialized every time I closed my eyes, making me afraid to fall asleep. I'm still scared of sleeping alone. The yawn the sneeze, the breath of whoever's lying next to me retrieves me from the nightmares. Even though I'm all grown up. I say it like a joke, and it usually gives people a laugh. "You're still a little kid," they say. It's lonely being in a big bed all by myself. It's never hurt my feelings. They're only strangers.”
― Youngha, Love or Hate

“He's not mine. I can tell he's thinking about someone else. I feel like he keeps slipping through my fingers, even while he's within reach. I've never felt this way before.”
― Youngha, Love or Hate

“The Canadian tradition was, she had found, on the whole genteel. Any evidence that an ancestor had performed any acts other than working and praying was usually destroyed. Families handily became respectable in retrospect but it was...hell on history.”
― Marian Engel, Bear