Seed Quotes
"The humor of it trumped the migraine that was blooming behind his eyes, creeping along the inside of his skull, growing with each reflective flash of broken yellow line."
"Live Oak was a blip on the map—a place you drove past and thought Oh, how quaint, before blowing through without a second thought."
"The thing was totaled, twisted like a tin can."
"He imagined being paralyzed, wondered if it hurt to sever your spinal cord or die in a car accident like this one."
"What if she was too late? What if she’d pull the blanket away and Charlie would be dead and blue and it was all her fault?"
"Despite Abby’s slow-growing apprehension, she laughed as her little sister bounced around like a monkey, using a toilet tube clutched in front of her mouth like a microphone."
"Jack’s tattoos were all in places that could easily be hidden."
"But it had taken months of repeat visits to a parlor to complete the design. Jack had spent hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours beneath the needle, etching the image of his childhood nightmares into his skin, all without a clear understanding of why he was doing it at all."
""You probably should have listened to your mother," he said."
""The guy has excellent taste," Jack insisted."
"It was amazing how quickly they could go from foreplay to running down the hall."
"In spite of its cheerful wallpaper, the doctor’s office felt nothing but cold."
"Every time he closed his eyes he saw her standing in the corner of her room, shaded by the dark; he watched himself approach, ready to pull her from the shadows, only to catch sight of her eyes—soulless and abysmally empty."
"She had repeatedly told her mother that she was no longer dying, that a visit to the doctor was ‘totally dumb’."
"C for Charlie," Charlie whispered to her dad. "C for curse, Jack thought. C for catastrophe. Calamity. Chaos."
"Sometimes he eats his own poop," Charlie explained.
"The day Jack’s parents suspected there was something wrong with him was the day they found a stray cat hanging from the tree in the front yard."
"He taught himself to shoot rocks as well as Robin Hood, preparing for the next time that roving cat crossed his path."
"Despite Charlie’s improvement in health, Aimee wouldn’t let it go."
"I’ve lost him," she choked. "I’ve lost my Jackie, oh God, I’ve lost him…"
"Despite his promise to come straight home, Jack decided to hit Bourbon Street for a few minutes after the show."
"The morning after Gilda’s bout of hysteria, she dug through the bedroom closet like a dog trying to sniff out a bone."
"I don’t know why I suddenly needed to come to church. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t know what to think or what to expect."
"Everyone knew demons didn’t like the house of God."
"By the time mass was over, Jack was exhausted."
"She felt so confident that she happily socialized on the church’s front steps."
"God hadn’t been able to help Jack—He hadn’t even tried."
"A moment, the perfect family fresh from Sunday mass."
"I didn’t even want it," Charlie said softly."
"He couldn’t imagine how hard it would have been for a sibling, someone who was, by default, the scapegoat."
"It wasn’t me," Charlie whispered, so quietly Jack was sure she hadn’t meant for him to hear."
"It was you, it was me, it was us, it was we."
"But try as he might, he never saw a damn thing: nothing but his room bathed in moonlight."
"If you believe in the Devil, somewhere in the deepest fibers of your being you had to believe in God."
"But he’d never seen God. He’d never felt God. He’d never been helped by God."
"The darkness," Abby whispered. "The way she smiles."
"Anything was better than sleeping in a room with someone who held darkness in their eyes."
"The kind of place with a front door that looked like it’d been kicked in one too many times."
"Sitting in the dark interior of the Oldsmobile, the cabin lit by garish red neon from a flickering Schlitz sign."
"If there wasn’t evil, we would be seriously lacking in the serial killer department."
"I’ve never seen any miracles, but I sure as hell have seen my share of darkness."
"I think we need to take Charlie to a psychiatrist."
"Normal children didn’t hang cats by lengths of fishing line from the branches of a family tree."
"This cannot be happening. This isn’t our family."
"It isn’t headlights. Nobody drives up and down that road hardly ever."
"The longer he spent alone the less he could remember."
"Strange things never happened around Stephen."
"Her insistence that doctors diagnose his condition faded into silent defeat."
"The realization hit him head-on, like a bullet train on a one-way track."
"Everything is falling apart," she said softly. "Everything is completely fucked up."
"Maybe his condition was contagious, like smallpox or the plague."
"What the fuck, Jack?" he murmured, glaring at the road.
"He’d just lay there, his brains oozing out of his skull, dead and waiting for the animals to drag him away."
"Everything about her, from her little-girl voice to the artificial innocence she wore across her face, made Jack hate her."
"The idea of this thing, whatever it was, knowing that she was standing in the doorway made her blood run cold."
"The longer she stood there, the more reality drummed at her brain."
"You’re runnin’, but you’re runnin’ from something you’ve been runnin’ from all your life, aren’t ya? Runnin’ like it’s gonna make some sort of big difference this time round."
"Seems like the ones runnin’ are the only ones that ever stop on in here, lookin’ for an excuse to turn right around and head back to where they came from."
"Maybe what I’m sellin’ you just can’t see yet."
"It matters cause you coulda found answers there, but instead you end up drivin’ in the middle of the night to find someone here. You’re lookin’ for a way out and you don’t know which way to look."
"I’m running straight into the thing I’ve been avoiding, so that’s a start, right?"
"The end of the story is gonna get ya whether you want it to er’not."
"I ain’t never seen anyone, not anyone outrun the Devil."
"That place gots the smell of ghosts, chief, and that smell don’t wash off easy."
"You’re runnin’ like you’ve been runnin’ for your whole damn life."
"You ain’t gonna outrun it—at least, not by my experience."
"It took all his strength to stay in the kitchen instead of storming into the living room, ending her then and there."
"His lungs burned as he sprinted down route 17."
"Anyone who yanked him off the highway would be better than Stephen and Gilda."
"The hours ticked by with the slowness of a hundred years."
"He understood why he hadn’t been allowed to remember the horrors he’d inflicted upon his mother and father."
"If you lead a man into a fog-covered field and tell him to walk straight, he’ll walk in circles instead."