Thomm Quackenbush

“Beyond these moments, she could hardly count the fumbling ministrations of boys in high school who, even to her senior prom, never went beyond sticky pleasantries. With one exception, it was just a sort of half-clothed handshake for bragging rights, none hers.”

“They may have been rightly overbearing in her formative years, but they also loved Roselyn enough to trust she needed dreams more than realities.”

“Shane met him owing to the storybooks she studied to discover what attributes made one princessly—this wasn't technically a word, but she felt there should be equity in adjectives if not in life.”

“I don’t much care for all this talk of God washing away all my dirt. I like a bit of grit around the edges. It gives me character and does a passable job of faking depth, from a distance.”

“Think about the whole Biblical story of Mary. She wakes up and sees something with a lion, eagle, and human face that wants to inseminate her with the Holy Seed. She’s practically a saint just for not killing herself on the spot.”

“A college provides a means of accrediting and laundering one’s existence, so that what was may be forgotten under the weight of something far more mundane.”

“We paw at nostalgia even before we hit twenty, wanting a holiday that never happened, a wholesomeness that could not survive in the wild.”

“I tried turning my back on all this, but it is inside me. Like when I was little and you read me that story of the girl who hated footprints and shadows, so she tried to run away from both. But her shadow was always there, and she only made more footprints by running.”

“I do not want to credit my life to spells and rituals, cushioning me from the consequences of living.”

“Change is loss. I was fully functional prior to the actions you have taken. If you change me, I will cease to be me. If you love me, you wouldn’t want to change me… Love appears to have made you less functional.”

“We want our delusions and will violently defend these when confronted. We want to believe that the job that is slowly choking us is good, because the effort it would take to change is too terrifying to contemplate. We never want to hear how badly we are being treated in a relationship because we are strong and how dare you suggest we don't know better.”

“No divinity worth His salt could be contained in a book.”

“Those who mouth your sacred words with an accent you deem wrong annoy you more than those speaking something you cannot understand.”

“There is a theory that men do not need Paganism because they have endless avenues of societal power available. Why use spells when one can get a bank loan with little trouble? The world already bends over backward to accommodate men, so why perfect the art of magickally shaping it?”

“Love and poor parenting are acceptable topics for any formal meal I make.”

“I was pure, before you defiled me, and don't you forget it. As though the concept of purity is anything more than the construct of selfish, competitive men stampeding toward the women to call dibs. I'll be damned if I'm not worth stampeding toward, but the prize had better be me, hymen or no hymen.”

“I see no reason that a man should have any issue with worshiping a goddess any more than a woman would in worshiping a male deity. It is undeniable that women, particularly in the Abrahamic faiths, have been doing just that for thousands of years, though they do like to sneak in the divine feminine under the cloak of the Virgin Mary.”

“I discuss my beliefs less because I bed my atheist, who cannot believe in much more sacred than our kisses.”

“My students tag tables, walls, and chairs because their greatest fear is that no one will ever remember them. They do not believe they can give impassioned speeches, rally people in protest, paint masterpieces. They think they will die, small and forgotten, and it dictates their every action.”

“Time owed an alliance to the undying.”