Noel Cotham

“If you like the fields we’d walk away from the road into the fields, or we’d go fishing, if that’s what you like to do. The sun would set and we’d build a fire. The trees and rocks would shrink and their shadows would grow. People don’t have eyes by the light of a fire. No, that’s glib and pointless. It’s all glib and pointless. In the worlds that live in these tears just as much as in the real world, I’d stare at you and have no idea who you were, for hours. One word after another would get choked in my heart. I wouldn’t be able to ask your name. You wouldn’t be able to see my face. After a while the fire would go out, you’d be lost in the dark, and I would cry these tears.”
― Denis Johnson, Resuscitation of a Hanged Man

“He’d come to war to see abstractions become realities. Instead he’d seen the reverse. Everything was abstract now.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“Our hearts are only two pounds, not much room for love.”
― Matthew Stokoe, COWS

“If you want a moral, here it is: what god giveth, he taketh away. In this story art is god. And if god is art, then what is the devil? Bad art of course.”
― Jeet Thayil, The Book of Chocolate Saints