The Whisper Man

If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken. If you play outside alone, soon you won’t be going home. If your window’s left unlatched, you’ll hear him tapping at the glass. If you’re lonely, sad, and blue, the Whisper Man will come for you.

Courage is not the absence of fear, Pete knew. Courage requires fear.

The devil finds work for idle hands. Bad thoughts find empty heads.

When there was something awful that had to be faced, it was better to face it immediately; as bad as the event might be, it would occur regardless, and at least that way you wouldn’t have to endure the anticipation as well.

That was the thing about going to sleep. It kind of scrubbed things. Arguments, worries, whatever. You could be scared or upset about something, and you might think sleep was impossible, but at some point it happened, and when you woke up in the morning the feeling was gone for awhile, like a storm passed during the night.

The butterflies didn’t have a choice, after all. That’s what things do. Even in the toughest of circumstances, they keep living.

The only ghosts that existed were in your head. They spoke through you, not to you.

but grief is a stew with a thousand ingredients, and not all of them are palatable.

There were always so many reasons to drink, though. Only ever one real reason not to.

Battles often make more sense from the sky.

Guilt. Fear. Anger. Once loose, any one of them would charge off, dragging the others along like dogs chained in a pack. And that was no good at all.

The world was full of bad men. Full of bad dreams that didn’t always happen when you were asleep.

He had loved her as deeply as she loved him, but the gift and receipt of love was a language

It was an attempt to make an impact on a world that seemed so oblivious to his existence. It stemmed from a desire to be seen. To be noticed. To be loved. Because that was all any child wanted, deep down.

People together, as people should be. He felt a degree of loneliness at that, but you could find pleasure where you looked for it, even in as solitary a life as his.

Sometimes people want things to be more complicated than they really are.

That thought was so much better. It was the difference between regret and relief, between a cold hearth full of dead, gray ash and a fire that was still alight.

Outside, I clicked the padlock back in place, sealing the butterflies within. It seemed remarkable that they'd survived in there for so long in such fruitless and insubstantial conditions. But as I walked back up the drive to the front of the house, I thought about Jake and me, and I realized that was just what happens. The butterflies didn't have a choice, after all. That's what things do. Even in the toughest of circumstances, they keep living.

It always comes back to me for you, doesn't it? It always ends where it starts.

That’s what things do. Even in the toughest of circumstances, they keep living.

I liked it when people were impressed with my son; it made me feel proud of him. Stupid to think that way, of course--he was a person in his own right, not some accomplishment of mine--but the feeling was always there, and, if anything, with my father it was stronger than usual. I wasn't sure why.

It was a daunting prospect, because it was all such a jumble, and there was also so much I didn't know and perhaps never would. But then again, I wasn't sure that in itself was a problem. The truth of something can be in the feeling of it as much as the fact.

While it might be true that we still loved each other when we argued, it didn’t mean that we loved ourselves.

[...] a woman with a million things to do, determined to do each of them herself.

In a war, you used any weapon at hand to win an individual battle, and then you regrouped and fought the next one. And the next. All all the ones that followed.

The fact that people die, and after a short amount of time only objects remain, the bones little more than a scattering of possessions abandoned where they fall.

But he could read the whole book of his father now and he knew that none of it had ever been about him. His own book was separate, and always had been. He had only ever needed to be himself, and it had just taken time—too much time—to understand that.

If everyone could see God, how many people would bother going to church?