A. Lee Martinez

“Being a good person is more than just not being a bad person.”

“Music has always been the greatest expression of mortal philosophy," continued Lucky. "The path to enlightenment is found in the lyrics of Spinal Tap.”

“To worry is to acknowledge that the world is unpredictable, and there is power in understanding one's own powerlessness at times. But too often worry takes on life of its own. Men are quite prone to this. They'll plague themselves with so many 'what if's and 'if only's that they soon forget to ponder the true possibilities before them. Which inevitably lead to poor decisions. Whatever happens will happen. Sometimes we have say over the future. Sometimes we don't. Either way, worrying alone never accomplishes anything.”

“Because life is complicated and difficult. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't truly lived.”

“We all carry many selves, but in the end, these are just phantoms of possibility, nothing more than ghosts of broken destinies.”

“The revelation that there was nothing "special" about humanity didn't shock her. Not specifically. She'd always been cynical about that sort of thing. The idea that reality was all too big to even quantify in any meaningful way didn't disturb her much either. Except, deep down, she'd assumed there was some inherent logic at work. Like ricocheting molecules congealing into planets and stars, dogs and cats. At least the made sense, even if it wasn't very comforting. At least it put things in neat little boxes with neat little labels that she didn't always understand but could rely on in terms of familiarity.”

“She stopped shrieking after a moment. It wasn't the crazy looks she drew from the other pedestrians that made her stop. And her damaged sanity hadn't managed to repair itself. She'd left something behind in that apartment. Something she'd always taken for granted. Faith in a rational world. It was like a tiny cog had been removed from her brain, and all the gears were still working, but a slight wobble was slowly and inevitably stripping the teeth until one day, without warning the Rube Goldberg device that was her mind would fall apart with a loud SPROING.”

“Mortal life is too short to be worried all the time.”

“Rockwood didn't have a movie theater or an IHOP or a strip mall. But it did have two churches, a ramshackle bar, and last (but certainly not least) Wacky Willie's Deluxe Goofy Golf, a barren landscape of wilted ferns and plastic flamingos with peeling paint. Wacky Willie had added the 'Deluxe' when finally ridding the thirteenth hole windmill of a stubborn family of bats after a great and terrible struggle that would forever be known as 'The Fearsome Bat War of Rockwood County' by Willie, but was usually referred to as 'That Time Willie Had to Get Rabies Shots' by everyone else.”

“A place that proves if you get enough talented people in a room, one or two are bound to offer some helpful advice. Kind if like monkeys with typewriters.”

“Those who write are writers. Those who wait are waiters.”

“Destiny was a hope found in the hearts of desperate men. But sometimes, if they believed strongly enough, desperate men could do great things.”

“I believe it was the great ogre philosopher Gary who observed that complexity is, generally speaking, an illusion of conscious desire. All things exist in as simple a form as necessity dictates. When a thing is labeled 'complex,' that's just a roundabout way of saying you're not observant enough to understand it.”

“Ned passed the next few minutes quietly not dying in his office, and was pleased with how well it was going. He'd stayed alive longer, but now that he was concentrating on it, it felt more like an accomplishment.”

“When you cross over into the weird stuff, there's no going back. Hector has a theory on it. Calls it the law of 'Anomalous Phenomena Attraction.' He explained it to me once. Didn't really pay attention, but it boils down to 'weird shit pulls in more weird shit.”

“Terrible errors are rarely made all at once. Usually they are performed one small misstep at a time.”

“In the middle of nowhere, along a quiet stretch of road, the diner dreamt of the hungry dead. And of two men.”

“He gives me the hairy eyeball, and asks me to help him find his pancreas.”

“Quiet descended, a silence so consuming that even the drafty corridors ceased whistling. Bog wasn't certain where to look, so he solved the problem by plucking out his eyes and sticking them in a drawer.”

“Death should take more care with his paperwork.”

“Quiet fell upon the pickup and lasted for a little over nineteen minutes. Is that why you hang around with him?", Loretta asked. "Cuz he saved your life?""Sort'a. I know Earl isn't always easy to get along with. Fact is, he can be a real pain the ass more often than not, but after you spend enough time with him, and you learn to ignore his personality, he's a pretty decent guy.""If you say so.”

“Reality is like a fruitcake; pretty enough to look at but with all sorts of nasty things lurking just beneath the surface.”