Tom Needles

“If nothing was worth living for it followed, didn’t it, that there was nothing worth dying for either.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“When words fail you, you dissolve into an image of nothingness. You disappear.”
― Paul Auster, Talking to Strangers: Selected Essays, Prefaces, and Other Writings, 1967–2017

“After a battle lasting many ages,
The Devil won,
And said to God
(who had been his Maker):
"Lord,
We are about to witness the unmaking of Creation
By my hand.
I would not wish you
to think me cruel,
So I beg you, take three things
From this world before I destroy it.
Three things, and then the rest will be
wiped away."

God thought for a little time.
And at last He said:
"No, there is nothing."
The Devil was surprised.
"Not even you, Lord?" he said.
And God said:
"No. Not even me.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War

“Friendship is like a house,” Lore finally managed to say, Owen’s head cradled in her lap. “You move into this place together. You find your own room there, and they find theirs, but there’s all this common space, all these shared places. And you each put into it all the things you love, all the things you are. Your air becomes their air. You put your hearts on the coffee table, next to the remote control, vulnerable and beautiful and bloody. And this friendship, this house, it’s a place of laughter and fun and togetherness, too. But there’s frustration sometimes. Agitation. Sometimes that gets big, too big, all the awful feelings, all that resentment, building up like carbon monoxide. Friendship, like a house, can go bad, too. That air you share? Goes sour. Dry rot here, black mold there, and if you don’t remediate, it just grows and grows. Gets bad enough, one or all of you have to move out. And then the place just fucking sits there, abandoned. Empty and gutted. Another ruin left to that force in the world that wants everything to fall apart. You can move back into a place like that, sometimes. But only if you tear it all down and start again.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods