jordanliketheriver’s Reviews > The Slantwise Histories: Collected Stories > Status Update

“The taste of asphalt and oil filled my mouth, a dead world on my tongue.”

“I was raised in the church, wasn’t I? That’s how a believer proves his love: blindly, on his knees.”

“I decided I would find the answer, no matter the cost. I was a knight, wasn’t I? That’s how a knight proves his love: on a pile of corpses.”

“Finch always said there were certain places where it was easier to tell stories, and to hear them: around a fire at night, in the mist at dawn, on a porch at dusk. In-between places, balanced on the border between familiar and strange.”

“I still keep a pack beneath my bed, just in case…Everything I need to survive. May knew what I was; she’d found my pack when we were kids. Shed only asked if I would take her with me when I ran. And I said yes—easily, honestly—because by then she had become one of the things I needed to survive.”

“Her mouth had tasted like lightning, after, bright and urgent.”

“She’d straitened up from slicing the stalks and shaded her eyes and seen Leslie for the very first time, drawn by the early-evening sun like some ancient idol made of muscle and sweat and white teeth flashing. It wasn’t falling in love so much as falling into place, perfectly, and seeing the whole future in the shape of his shoulders and knowing it was full of hurt but knowing, too, that it was worth it.”

“I know I didn’t cheat him, not really. Mr. Death always wins in the end. But sometimes—if you’re stubborn and sad and tired as fuck of the way things go—you can win a hand or two.”

“I can see how tired they are, worm with work and worry. I can see how there’s never quite enough money…but I can see, too, that it’s worth it. That they’ll keep working and worrying and the impossible alchemy of love will turn never enough into plenty.”

“Fairytales are the lies we wish were true.”

“There are no happily-ever-afters, save the ones we carve for each other from the cruel meat of the world.”