Tyler

“I take the knife and stab myself in the neck. I bleed out on top of the fortune-teller’s grave and then I’m dead and that’s my game. I am OK and I’ll be OK but this is the end and this is my story. CH.”
― John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van

“I was asleep, then I was awake, and the first thing I thought about when I woke up was this rifle with the special attachment I took from the fortune-teller's body, a body I took three turns to find and another turn to strip of anything useful to me and Sean I could smell body when I thought about this, hot New Mexico sun human body and so I don't think I can play anymore. It's not like I think anything's going to happen, I'm fine, and I don't actually have anything better to do, and it doesn't take up TOO much of my time? But it's in my head now and I don't want it anymore so I'm going free-play here, you have to let me do this.”
― John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van

“We all carry trace fossils within us – the marks that the dead and the missed leave behind. Handwriting on an envelope; the wear on a wooden step left by footfall; the memory of a familiar gesture by someone gone, repeated so often it has worn its own groove in both air and mind: these are trace fossils too. Sometimes, in fact, all that is left behind by loss is trace – and sometimes empty volume can be easier to hold in the heart than presence itself.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Underland: A Deep Time Journey

“To caress the serpent that devours us, until it has eaten away our heart.”
― Voltaire, Candide, or, Optimism