Molly Says

Here be quotes from the main page, archived:

Their father, Josh Powell, who had been a person of interest in the investigation, had said he was not involved in his wife’s disappearance and did not know what happened to her after he took the boys out for an impromptu, middle-of-the-night camping trip in the Utah desert during a snowstorm.
-LA Times news article, Kim Murphy

When a letter came from my mother and father, I spent half the day reading it. My mother said they were praying for me, which was a comfort, and my father said the cows had nearly gone through all the hay he baled and stacked for the summer. I hadn’t written them in a month. You had to be brave in a letter home, and I didn’t feel very brave. And I didn’t want to burden them with worry over something none of us could change.
-Daily Bread, Steve Edwards

“We are sorry, sir, but you cannot be admitted on merely a Promissary Voucher, are you kidding us, you must take your Voucher and your Proof of Purchases from at least six of our Major Artistic Sponsors, such as AOL, such as Coke, and go at once to the Redemption Center on Forty-fourth and Broadway to get your real actual tickets, and please do not be late, as latecomers cannot be admitted, due to special effects which occur early, which require total darkness in order to simulate the African jungle at night.”
-my flamboyant grandson, George Saunders

One night Charlie was waked up by a noise in his backyard. He caught hold of his hatchet, hoping it was a criminal, for his life had been dull lately.
-Ray, Barry Hannah

“You’re due back at work when?” she says. “October thirty-first. Halloween. Appropriate, wouldn’t you say?” Whatever this means: probably something as witless as Witches are bad and so is going back to work.
*
Rathbone finds a stick, head-fakes Willis with it, jumps back. Willis lunges a couple of times. If his heart’s not even in this, what’s he doing with a family?
*
He blocks the left nostril and snorts a little up the right. Blocks the right and a little up the left. Tilts his head back, keeps sniffing. Oh yeah. The right decision, absolutely.
-Preston Falls, by David Gates

The solitary molar of a streetwalker whose body had gone unclaimed had a gold filling. All the rest were gone, as if by tacit agreement. This one the morgue attendant claimed for himself, flogged it, and had himself a night out on the proceeds. Because, so he said, only dust should revert to dust.
-Circulation, Gottfried Benn

You might come here Sunday on a whim. Say your life broke down. The last good kiss you had was years ago. You walk these streets laid out by the insane, past hotels that didn’t last, bars that did, the tortured try of local drivers to accelerate their lives. Only churches are kept up. The jail turned 70 this year. The only prisoner is always in, not knowing what he’s done.
-Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg, by Richard Hugo

“She was young, and I knew that even then.”
-Richard Ford, “Communist”

Born into this / Walking and living through this / Dying because of this / Muted because of this / Castrated / Debauched / Disinherited / Because of this / Fooled by this / Used by this / Pissed on by this / Made crazy and sick by this / Made violent / Made inhuman / By this …
-Charles Bukowski, Dinosauria, We

That became the routine for a while, until I was old enough to know better. “It won’t hurt long” became “It gets better,” but it never did. The shouting at night between Buddy and my mom got louder, went deeper into the nights. His breath got heavier and eventually even his skin smelled permanently of beer.
-Ryan W. Bradley, “The Pit Bull’s Tooth”

“…and just when he had made up his mind to leave his wife she left him and went off with a miniature-painter. As he had been thinking for months about leaving his wife and had not done it because it would be too cruel to deprive her of himself, her departure was a very healthful shock.”
-Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (before Gertrude Stein told him to stop using the word “very,” apparently.)

A note gets slipped into my locker and I unfold it, thinking, “love letter.” The handwriting peaks like mountains and cuts in jagged daggers, plus the red ink, plus the note says, “I am going to kill you in geometry today.” I’m afraid of whoever wrote this note. I walk through the halls and faces turn black. My gym teacher stares at me and slits his throat with his thumb as I pass. The warning bell rings and the black faces scatter. What can I do? There’s nothing I can do. I go to geometry. -Bad Day, by me.

“Oh, I feel some concern for my future, all right. Sure. Sure, I do.” I thought about it for a minute. “But not too much, I guess. Not too much, I guess.”
-J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Buck saw Francois holding a stick in his hand. Buck played with sticks at the Judge’s house. He thought Francois was going to play a game with him. But Francois held the stick above Buck’s head and brought it down on him. Buck didn’t know what had happened. He felt the pain of being hit with a stick for the first time in his life. He was angry and he tried to bite Francois. This was a mistake. Francois hit him with the stick again and again. The pain hurt and Buck’s mouth was bleeding. Buck learned he could not win against the man, the stick and the rope. He sat down, and the men laughed at him.
-Jack London, The Call of the Wild

At Annie and Kevin’s house there is everyone. Everyone who is not there is on their way. There isn’t anyone caught under anything. Everyone’s hair looks wonderful. There is no glass caught between the strands. Everyone hasn’t lost their homes. Everyone hasn’t lost their cars, their arms, their selves. Everyone is okay. Everyone is okay, yes? Everyone is okay, right?
-Brian Oliu

If you’re frightened of dying, and you’re holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. If you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the Earth.
-Jakob’s Ladder

Finally Bennie came out. He looked trim. He looked fit. He wore black trousers and a white shirt buttoned at the neck but no tie. I understood something for the very first time when I looked at that shirt: I understood that expensive shirts looked better than cheap shirts. The fabric wasn’t shiny, no—shiny would be cheap. But it glowed, like there was light coming through from the inside. It was a fucking beautiful shirt, is what I’m saying.
-Jennifer Egan,  A Visit From the Goon Squad

You said I’d wake up dead drunk, alone in the park. I called you a liar, but how right you were.
-Grandaddy

And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn’t really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I’ve felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long I’ve been pretending I’m OK, just to get along, just for, I don’t know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen.
-Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman

Someone standing close to me is shot in the neck. He spins round suddenly very slowly and I can see the hole in his neck where his adam’s apple should be. It is edited like a scene from a film. The crowd scatters and meshes and the man falls. Bad thoughts crowd my head. But the worst thing is that I want to get away as quickly as I can and I can’t remember where I have left my coat.
-Murder, by Stanley Donwood

Help! Someone page the god… Help! Is there a poet in the house? Help! I’m afraid we’ll have to innovate… Help! I can’t bring her back to life alone…
-Dose One, “It’s Them!”

One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; – hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; – hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; – hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin – a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it – if such a thing wore possible – even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.
-”The Black Cat”, Edgar Allen Poe

Director’s voice: Ernie? Give me a crow, no, give me a murder of crows on the wing.
-1. The temps mort shot, by Peter Jay Shippy

“I got a job pulling weeds, but it was hard and I quit.”
-My favorite line in all of literature, from a John Fante novel.

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.”
-Araby, James Joyce

There is no shame in this. Cue up – Quick. The babysitter threw up. The original cannisters are hidden in the bannisters. Gold Bond? Check. Sleepy seeds? Check. Dog whistle? Check…
-Hats on Beds, Buck 65

Here is a list of people that have drowned in the river: apple, bear, crush, dime, eagle, fire, fire, ghost, ghost, ghost, hair, iron, jab, kite, loss, lost, lose, me. Here is a list of what it sounded like when they were drowning: the rolling up of a car window when you know it is going to rain later that day, a gas-powered stove turning on in order to boil water for noodles, a hand feeling around an empty pocket.
Taska losa — The Park At Manderson Landing m4w, by Brian Oliu

He turned to leave. “Yeh, so, sorry about the legs! Hope you get better.” “I won’t, I’m afraid.” This seemed to anger the man. “Hey. Miracles Happen.”
-Hibachi, by J. Robert Lennon

“Bob,” Jude said, leaning forward, lowering her voice. “I think you should know something; I’m not well.”
The fluorescent light above them flickered mildly. Wink, wink. Last year, for instance, Jude had lost her car no fewer than five times. It seemed that the car had a way of moving itself once she’d parked it somewhere. Only after it was impounded was she ever able to track it down. Who lost their car five times? Not a well person.
-Our Own Flesh and Blood, by Becky Margolis

Ominously, he tells us in heavily-accented English that he has been forced to open up large tracts of his estate as a theme park, with log flumes, bowling alleys, rollercoasters, and burger bars, all of which are frequented by Western tourists who know nothing of the old ways. Our sympathy is tempered by the sure knowledge that the Count intends to suck out our souls with his pointy teeth.
-Stanley Donwood, Dracula

One waiter offers to feed her the salad. He kneels next to her and holds out a fork of lettuce and tomato, making airplane noises. She refuses, though she knows, she knows she should eat the salad. It is a very good sort of salad. A salad other restaurant-goers are jealous of. She knows they are jealous because they come to her two at a time to tell her they are jealous. We are so jealous of your salad, they say.
-Brandi Wells, Worst Time #6

And I wrapped my despair around myself like a blanket, while Ginny snored, and I watched the grey sky go pink, then orange, and I dreaded the arrival of the creepy sun and another day of pain.
-Ray Shea, Thirds

“Somehow that coyote had figured out how to make a living in his diminished condition. Both wounds were old. His coat was healthy, not starved-looking or mangy. Apparently he was perfectly happy to go on suffering if that’s what life was for, though he probably didn’t mind being shot by Oscar that much either.” -James Galvin, The Meadow