Chad Flaska > Recent Status Updates

“He thinks writing is also a kind of war, one you fight with yourself. The story is what you carry and every time you add to it, it gets heavier.

All over the world there are half-finished books—memoirs, poetry, novels—in desk drawers, because the work got too heavy for the people trying to carry it and they put it down.

Some other time, they think. Maybe when the kids are a little older. Or when I retire.

“Are you no afraid of God?”

“I got no reason to be afraid of God. I’ve even got a bone or two to pick with Him.”

“It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I dont believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God—who knows all that can be known—seems powerless to change.”

“A prison is like a—how do you call it? A salón de belleza. A beauty parlor. It is a big place for gossip. Everybody knows the story of everybody. Because crime is very interesting. Everybody knows that.”

“When she reached him he held out his hand and she took it. She was so pale in the lake she seemed to be burning. Like foxfire in a darkened wood. That burned cold. Like the moon that burned cold.”

“The fire had burned to coals and he lay looking up at the stars in their places and the hot belt of matter that ran the chord of the dark vault overhead and he put his hands on the ground at either side of him and pressed them against the Earth and in that coldly burning canopy of black he slowly turned dead center to the world, all of it taut and trembling and moving enormous and alive under his hands.”

You ever think about dyin?

Yeah. Some. You?

Yeah. Some. You think there’s a heaven?

Yeah. Don’t you?

I don’t know. Maybe. You think you can believe in heaven if you don’t believe in hell?

I guess you can believe what you want to.