Quotes by Thomm Quackenbush

Some points in time cannot flow. Think of those big-ticket moments, the ones you could still recite from fifth grade: your 1492 and Civil Wars, the Titanic and presidential assassinations. These are icebergs, solid and immense, forcing incalculable eddies to swirl around them.

Instead of the birds of the sky and beast of the field, the gods were more than men because Man needed them to be, for what could the world be if Man were the best of all creatures?

The Word no longer belonged to Man because they believed it did not. Man saw the gods alone as Creators and forgot that there had ever been any other way.

Angels are just beyond us. They’re creatures that biology doesn’t apply to. They don’t love humanity at all. They just love God.

You get a few of them together and don’t be surprised if pipes and drums appear out of nowhere. It is a sort of magic people believe in…

[His] leaving had stabbed her heart. This organ was not inclined to forgive her for vulnerability.

Loving her has become a part of my religion, a gentle mantra with every beating of my heart. I cannot imagine its Ragnarok without wilting.

It’s about Nietzsche’s theory of universal debt. Your parents make it possible for you to believe a far better myth than Santa. They let you think that you, as a kid, don’t owe the world a thing. The world can give you, even if just for a few minutes, utter joy without requiring anything from you. It’s not about consumerism. As far as you know, no one buys you these presents. They come out of nothingness, with fantasies of elves attached. You aren’t required to be grateful to your parents or anything like that. They can give to you and nothing is required in return. When you get old enough, when you have kids, you get to enact this myth for them. It has nothing to do with any fat man in a red suit, no matter what we tell ourselves. It’s about owing nothing, and then realizing that you have to do this job of perpetuating this… this fantasy world, whether you like it or not.

Holding fantasy to our chests only means our hands are not free to work.

The UFOs were nothing more than the collective fantasies of a stressed out society... The world into which UFOs had appeared was one of under-the-desk siren drills against nuclear annihilation. Society had made a new myth, a communal idea of something outside a species apparently intent on dooming itself.

Maybe [aliens] have been in our lives a lot longer than we want to admit. People have always seen strange things—elves and fairies—and now we dont. Now we see them, right?

Anyone who thinks traditional and modern interpretations of demons are frightening had better remember that real angels inspired awe because they were so ghastly. How we usually think of angel is all due to Renaissance painters trying to sex up the concept. Most Christians, if they saw an angel in the flesh, would go run for their guns.

Though her body fit with his like a puzzle piece, his mind was an ever-shifting riddle she felt she could study her whole life and never fully solve. She spent the most time touching him, caressing him, massaging the secrets from his shoulders and embarrassments from his lower back.

His mind was a tapestry constantly weaving and unweaving with the dedication of Penelope for her Odysseus.

Our brains want God even as our minds debunk the divine.

In the beginning, there was nothing. Then, out of the nothing came the Word and the Word was power. Every utterance of the Word gave form to the Void, starting with beings to utter the Word. There was no Adam, no Eve, and no need. What Man named was.

I have heard the predictable slew of insults, threats, epithets, and curses. Underneath all these, I hear their fear. They don’t want to hurt me, though I may serve as a stand-in for a man who they do want to hurt. They want to scare me because fear is the only way they have learned to feel powerful.

You kill by consent, every time you let something… pervert the balance when you have the power to stop it.

You belong to the world. Don’t be afraid to be a part of it.

God has planned the world too perfectly for me to doubt that everyone is where they are supposed to be.