Steven Sherrill · 313 pages
Rating: (2.9K votes)
“There, in the horseshoe drive, Kelly, gullible and mortal Kelly, awaits an explanation from a bedraggled immortal. The Minotaur accepts this temporary blessing for all it is worth. There are few things that he knows, these among them: that is is inevitable, even necessary, for a creature half man and half bull to walk the face of the earth; that in the numbing span of eternity even the most monstrous among us needs love; that the minutiae of life sometimes defer to folly; that even in the most tedious unending life there comes, occasionally, hope. One simply has to wait and be ready.”
― Steven Sherrill, quote from The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break
“Standing at the window, reading the menu of Obediah's services, the Minotaur wishes he could believe in what she has to offer: a promise woven into deep lines of his palm, some turn of fate told by a card. But faith is a nebulous thing and charlatans a dime a dozen; it's always been that way. The Minotaur both envies and pities the devout.”
― Steven Sherrill, quote from The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break
“The architecture of the Minotaur’s heart is ancient. Rough hewn and many chambered, his heart is a plodding laborious thing, built for churning through the millennia. But the blood it pumps—the blood it has pumped for five thousand years, the blood it will pump for the rest of his life—is nearly human blood. It carries with it, through his monster’s veins, the weighty, necessary, terrible stuff of human existence: fear, wonder, hope, wickedness, love. But in the Minotaur’s world it is far easier to kill and devour seven virgins year after year, their rattling bones rising at his feet like a sea of cracked ice, than to accept tenderness and return it.”
― Steven Sherrill, quote from The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break
“Cecie keeps telling him she’d like to take him home some night, husband or no. The Minotaur waits hopefully. Husband or no.”
― Steven Sherrill, quote from The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break
“Pity the child for his loss. He truly wanted his laser gun to kill the Minotaur, believed that it would, even. Each time an act of hope fails, the capacity for experiencing hope itself diminishes. The child will be lucky if he reaches adulthood with even a shred of faith intact.”
― Steven Sherrill, quote from The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break
“Drawn lids one screen of skin, dreampaintings move across Day's colored dark. Tonight, in a lapse unfluttered by time, he travels what seems to be back. Shrinking, smoother, loses his belly and faint acne scars. Bird-boned gangle; bowl haircut and cup-handle ears; skin sucks hair, nose recedes into face; he swaddles in his pants and then curls, pink and mute and smaller until he feels himself split into something that wriggles and something that spins. Nothing stretches tight across everything else. A black point rotates. The point breaks open, jagged. His soul sails toward one color.”
― David Foster Wallace, quote from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
“NOT long ago, there lived in London a young married couple of Dalmatian dogs named Pongo and Missis Pongo. (Missis had added Pongo’s name to her own on their marriage, but was still called Missis by most people.) They were lucky enough to own a young married couple of humans named Mr. and Mrs. Dearly, who were gentle, obedient, and unusually intelligent—almost canine at times. They understood quite a number of barks: the barks for “Out, please!” “In, please!” “Hurry up with my dinner!” and “What about a walk?” And even when they could not understand, they could often guess—if looked at soulfully or scratched by an eager paw. Like many other much-loved humans, they believed that they owned their dogs, instead of realizing that their dogs owned them. Pongo and Missis found this touching and amusing and let their pets think it was true.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from The 101 Dalmatians
“A woman needs what a woman needs.”
― Ted Dekker, quote from White: The Great Pursuit
“I could eat a unicorn and pick my teeth with his horn! I'm absolutely famished.”
― Amy Harmon, quote from A Different Blue
“Justice? What is justice? It's a mere word. It's an abstract word with no universal meaning. To different classes of people, justice means different things.
~149”
― Nien Cheng, quote from Life and Death in Shanghai
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