The collection / 307 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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307 results · Page 9 of 13Play this collection ▷

01Undated

Having in our childhood felt primal awe for the spectacle of the holiday, we are told to age into feeling sullen and resentful. You are supposed to proclaim Santa dead like preadolescent Nietzsches and decry the whole month as an orgy of crass commercialism.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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02Undated

She harbored the childhood presumption that the truly scary things could only find her in the night.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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03Undated

Americans bred like rabbits, expecting the reaper to slaughter at least a few before they reached ripeness.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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04Undated

American culture enforces such rigid gender roles for male friendships that they are gay unless they materially resemble a beer commercial.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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05Undated

Even putting aside the culturally indoctrinated terror that someone in America will assume that two men engage in sodomy behind barely closed doors, there simply isn't an elegant way of asking someone of your gender to hang out for the first time.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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06Undated

They tell me how they are not scared to die, but they are terrified of the lives circumstance forces them to lead.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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07Undated

Isn’t Santa just a stand in for the society that has locked them up for formative years? Something that watches and judges, telling them that they got what they deserved based on their behavior? Surely they have to have noticed that Saint Nick, like the judicial system itself, tends to look more favorably upon rich children. He is fat, white, past middle age, and holds all the cards.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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08Undated

If you do not need something that it is still useful, give it to someone who will appreciate it before you douse it in lighter fluid in hopes Santa Odin will put a new one under your Yule tree.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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09Undated

He seemed like the sort to have a vast arsenal of smirks, shaped over a decade of nonverbal conversation.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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10Undated

Adolescence impelled her eyes to stay at an even keel, to deal with the ground before flickering to the heavens. Night became not dotted with fairy clouds of celestial brilliance, but simply the time when the sun was out of sight.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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11Undated

The stars were so simple when she was a kid, a smattering of glowing dust circling the Earth. She did not then know that each was a sun, most considerably more massive than the daylight one she knew.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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12Undated

The demons are not easily dispatched, instead attaching themselves to otherwise beautiful things, a favorite food or a love note left for you, to see how you react when they rear up.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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13Undated

Kissing a stranger because that is what is done presages an unhappy year not for any supernatural reason, but because you are unsatisfied enough with your lot in life to put your lips on the line for a fallacy.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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14Undated

I miss more loving someone so deeply that I can't imagine a forever without her kisses.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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15Undated

Like any man, he had no real protection from an unsolicited kiss from a pretty woman, even one he had just murdered.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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16Undated

He relented to the kiss and gave of himself what she required, his lips parting in symmetry with hers until the moment of realization collapsed.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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17Undated

As he had kissed her neck, she could not repress the feeling she was a lamb making time with a wolf.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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18Undated

The art of chess is in knowing which is the most valuable piece in play, then having the courage to sacrifice it for the win.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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19Undated

If you think it is spiritual to burn food in front of starving people in hopes that your gods will bring this back to you in triplicate, you are missing the point and sowing animosity from all sides.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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20Undated

Students view any teacher who does not bury them under work as some sort of mentally impaired kitten to be kicked aside.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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21Undated

I look at my students and have no trouble picturing just how successful they should be, if only we could remove them from the impetuses that brought them to the facility. If we could move them away from gangs. If we could get them into a rehab that stuck. If we could take them from people who abuse their trust, safety, and bodies.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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22Undated

Like chocolate, she craved sleep and it made her life brighter, but she could do without.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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23Undated

Naps are not a sign of physical slovenliness. They are a sign that I am listening to my body. It will reward me with stable emotions, hormones that stay in check, social finesse, continued cleverness, and the ability to write prose that does not make me gag.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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24Undated

He kissed her forehead and drifted into an uneasy sleep, listening to the soft snoring of the creature on his chest, one he loved slightly more than he had come to fear.

Thomm Quackenbush / quote

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