Ilsa J. Bick

“Tell yourself you’re dead, the way Matt does, so the past can’t hurt you.”

“...she said all writers were prima donnas, drunks, social misfits, pompous, or depressed. Brilliant, maybe, but completely crazy.”

“..... desire is so much sweeter when you cant have it.”

“Honestly, Bob: how do you carve a scream?”

“My English teacher said that a writer is the worst judge of his own work.”

“No one can help but stare at the monster, because horror is a cousin to awe.”

“You want to brawl. You want to fight. Fighting tricks you into believing you can change the past, even when the past is dead and gone and all of it ashes.”

“Everybody breaks sooner or later, Bob. Anyone can drown. Sometimes you see it. Most often, youdon’t because the body protects and the skin hides, so drowning doesn’t look like drowning and somepeople scar so nicely. Take it from an expert.”

“As a doc, though, I've seen what happens when people are under a lot of stress. Doesn't always bring out their best. When people are scared, they get angry. They'll do things they never thought they would. They'll bargain and compromise in order to survive; they'll chase after miracle cures and believe just about anything so long as it gives them hope. When hope fails, then watch out. Some people get brutal. They'll turn on each other; they'll become their own worst enemies.”

“What you couldn't see and only imagined was always scarier than what was real.”

“There are those individuals who die for a cause, and we say they have made the ultimate sacrifice. We call them martyrs, and we never doubt their sincerity.Yet many others search their entire lives for something—or someone—worth dying for and this is very different. These are the lonely and the desperate, fearful that their lives have no meaning. They yearn for the bullet, if only someone else will pull the trigger.”