Sam > Recent Status Updates

“In that sacred moment, I am his God, his Creator. He answers only to me.”

3/3

“But how could I possibly reject him? How could I ever deny him what he lusts after, what he so desperately craves? “I reach behind my back, across my shoulder, peeling back curtains of flesh, and before I’m fully healed, I pluck the ivory jewel from my spine and present it to him with such care, such reverence—a holy relic that I know he will worship.”

2/3

“How’s your nose?’ Finn asks me, probably realizing he was a little more forceful than usual this time. ‘Does it hurt?’ “I respond by merely shaking my head ‘no,’ my throat clogged with the blood still pooling there. “‘Trent, would you undo your vertebrae for me again?’ he asks, his voice brittle thin and pathetic sounding—as if he already knows that he’s asking too much.”

1/

“I find such pleasure in the moments when I’m pinned underneath him, the firmness of our bodies rubbing together when his fist heats my cheek red with a new welt—another souvenir to be displayed in the museum of affection, our private gallery of living carnage.”

2/2

“I enjoy hurting him. I know for certain that he finds such divine pleasure in hurting me. “I delight in the way it feels when my hand smashes into the crook of his nose, red and wet spraying my face all at once.”

1/2

“I fall in love with Finn Kitrick the day after my seventeenth birthday, and I tell him that I would gleefully undo my vertebrae for him if he ever asked,” Rupert tells Mrs. Esherwood.”

“Perhaps they should mourn their trespassers. All kinds of transgressions form and remake a person. Abuse and violence shape all human identity. But does such a meaningful act deserve grief?”

“When people realize that they cannot use you as they had intended, they want nothing to do with you. It’s almost like your very existence is an insult to their invention, their grand design. “If only I had met you sooner,” they might say. “I would have delighted in being the owner of your destruction; in the carnage I could charm from you.”

“I resemble something tattered, almost threadbare, but not quite completely broken yet. Perhaps still salvageable. Perhaps still redeemable. That’s why I’m used again and again.”

“I wish I could bury my brother—the tender memory of his scent, his gentle touch, his lovemaking—in the deepest grave I can dig inside my mind. But instead, I ladle him into the shallower pastures of my thoughts.”

“It’s normal for brothers to do these kinds of things with each other,” he whispers to me, cupping my testicles the same way your hands form a small bowl to drink water from a mountain spring. Is that what I am? I wonder to myself. A sacred mountain spring? Something to keep him from becoming parched?”

“Why did he have to try to cure himself? That’s exactly what Agnetha was—a temporary relief from the permanent affliction of grief. Rupert is certain that his father had tried to cure himself with Agnetha’s corpse.”

“He already knows there’s no music, no poetry in the male existence.”

“I have spent so many years attempting to be tender in a world that will never understand softer languages like quietness, compassion.”

“The threshold is the place to pause. —GOETHE”

“Dear kindhearted reader, When I first approached Titan Books with the formal proposal of We Are Always Tender with Our Dead (Burnt Sparrow Book 1), I assured my editor that I would handle the very graphic subject matter I had planned to write with the utmost delicateness and sensitivity. I regret to inform you, dear reader, that I have failed miserably.”

““Put some more pizza in your mouth, Matty,” Heather says. “Stop the words from coming out.””

“You two did a lot of things for me. But you didn’t do them because I forced you to. And it’s completely unreasonable to hold everything you did for me as a kid over my head, like some sort of lifelong ransom!””

““Yes, I think you could have said no. And I would’ve been mad for, like, a day, and then I would’ve watched fucking Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or something and forgotten about it. Because I was six.””

3/3

“Do you think a fucking six-year-old understands the concept of time and money? I don’t even remember most of it. If you didn’t want me to do it, or if we couldn’t have afforded it, you were adults, you could have said no.” “You think I could say no to—to my little boy—” My mother’s voice breaks, but it does nothing to move me. This is all just a show she’s putting on for herself.”

2/3

““How dare you speak to your mother and me like this?” he demands. “After everything we did for you. You got to race because of us, in case you’ve forgotten. We sacrificed everything—” “That’s not reasonable!” I snap. “I was six years old when I started karting.”
1/

““Did it help you stop fighting with them?” Kelsie laughs. “Fuck, no. But it stopped us from feeling like shit when we got into arguments. Because it’s not our job to make them happy, or to live our lives to please them. It’s only our job to acknowledge and respect their reasonable concerns.””

“I let myself open up to him, because I liked how much he liked it.”

““I deal with two types of people in this work, Jacob. People who are unhappy because they don’t know what they want, and people who are unhappy because they do know what they want but they won’t let themselves go after it. You know where you want to be. You’re just making excuses because you’re afraid of failing.””

“Now she’s dating this Christian block of wood with zero personality and a two-million-dollar trust fund, and she’s always harping on about how there’s nothing wrong with being traditional, and that a true feminist knows that the greatest joy of being a woman is caring for a good man and bearing his children.”

“It was true, I wasn’t known for being particularly friendly. It wasn’t that I was trying to be rude, I just always felt . . . out of place, I suppose. Uncomfortable.”

“ love should be put into action! Screamed the old hermit. across the pond an echo tried and tried to confirm it”

“ some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it “

“ as previously mentioned in chapter XV, Navidson never photographed scenery, but he also never photographed the threat of death without interposing someone else between himself and it.”

“ only this: at every stage, from one through six, you will risk more, see more, gather more, process more, fashion more, consider more, love more, suffer more, imagine more and in the end know why less means more and leave what doesn’t and keep what implies and create what matters. This is what is meant by ‘Artist’.”