Alden Bell

“...a noisy parade of memories that frustrate her because of the way they play themselves out. These memories-it feels like she's back there in the moment, like she has the moment to do over and make different choices than she made. But she can't, because they're just memories and they're set down permanent as if they were chiseled in marble, and so she just has to watch herself do the same things over and over and it's a condemnation if it's anything.”

“Not all the magic of earth is benevolent.”

“It never meant anything, Moses says. Not to the god above it and not to the earth below it. It never did. Not even when they first did it. But it’s the doin it that counts. It’s something. You draw imaginary lines. That’s what you do.The Vestal looks at him kindly, a smile on her lips that seems affectionate--even maybe admiring.Then what do you do with the lines? she asks.And Moses looks at her straight and true. He says:Then you pick one side or the other and you stand there.”

“Honey, she says, honest ain’t the half of what I’m not.”

“The abundance of small things, it'll bury you.”

“...and she's thinking of rage, like an ember or a burning acid swallowing up her knotted viscera. Blindness like the kind that leads men to perpetrate horrors, animal drunkenness, the jungles of the mind.”