Horns Quotes
"Ig had come close to drowning once and had suffered from asthma as a child, and to him, contentment was as simple as being able to breathe."
"The idea that he might be going to die brought with it a surge of relief, a physical sensation, like coming up for air after being underwater too long."
"It’s amazing how people let their kids act these days, isn’t it? When you think about it, you can hardly blame the child if the parent can’t teach them how to act."
"It wasn’t right to cover for you, not for that. You should’ve gone to jail. When I see you in the house, I want to slap that morose look right off your stupid face. Like you have anything to be sad about. You got away with murder. Literally."
"I don’t want to listen to this. I don’t want to know. When you talk, I want to sing! Lalala-la-la-la! When you talk, I don’t want to hear it. I want to hold my breath until you go away."
"You’re the one who ought to use that rope in the shed."
"You make me feel unclean. You make me want to wash, scrub myself with steel wool. My skin crawls when you talk to me."
"I’d love to kick her right in her spoiled ass, but I’m worried about what all these people would say if I hit her. Do you think—"
"I want to sleep with someone. I want someone to hold me in bed at night. I don’t care whether it’s a man or a woman. I don’t care. I don’t want to be alone anymore."
"I don’t want you to be my kid anymore. It’s too hard. I wish I just had Terry."
"I thought it was time for a new look. Do you like them?"
"I loved you two guys and wanted you to be happy. I never would’ve done anything to hurt her."
"You think you know someone. But mostly you just know what you want to know."
"It’s like the music in the supermarket."
"You’re not in band, so you don’t know, Ig. It’s hard to be desired by women and feared by men when your primary skill is playing ‘America the Beautiful’ on the trumpet."
"I’d like to write a law that says irresponsible bitches who do drugs have to get sterilized so they can’t have kids they aren’t going to take care of."
"That’s what I think about when I think about the girl in church."
"So politics doesn’t work out, you going to kill people for a living?"
"I’d burn him to death in his car. Do it with a bomb."
"I fixed the moon. When I was a little kid. And ever since, I’ve been good at fixing other things. It’s what I’m best at."
"You think I can’t wait for a few months?" he asked. He was going to make a joke about masturbation, but a strange thing happened on the way to the punch line. His breath got caught in his throat, and he couldn’t say any more.
"I know what happened. I know you just turned around and came back to get her a couple minutes later."
"The locusts came every seventeen years to fuck and to die."
"It was like watching his own soul trying to pry itself free from the demon to which it was anchored."
"I especially like that you think of it as a mental-health day."
"You’re the nicest guy in the world, Ig. I’ve always thought that."
"Everybody has a dark side. That was hers."
"I don’t think someone with horns coming out of their head ought to be allowed to live."
"You had to do it, you know. It was crazy, thinking that you could—that either of you could—"
"She has a good heart, but Glenna’s always been trash."
"Terry feels himself sliding back into his dreams of being onstage with Keith Richards, before an ecstatic crowd that is performing for him as much as he is performing for them."
"She’s a good kid. I hope her and Ig work it out."
"Good. Let’s stay out of jail if we can."
"Sometime later he opens his eyes and realizes the car isn’t moving."
"He can smell dawn, a fragrance of rain-saturated grass and warming earth."
"For no reason Terry can put his finger on, the sight of Lee waiting for him there on the porch steps unsettles him."
"The forensic evidence won’t match, and they’ll have to publicly clear him."
"In the middle of giving you her little lap dance, she started talking about all the money she could get, selling the story of Terry Perrish’s private gang bang to the tabloids."
"You just got Hothouse. You’re going back to L.A. in two days to hang with movie stars and underwear models."
"He is like a castaway on a desert island, watching an airplane glitter in the sky forty thousand feet overhead, with no way to signal it and his last chance at rescue sailing away."
"He felt he ought to be working on a plan, ought to have decided by now the proper way to deal with Lee Tourneau."
"She wore the cross of Jesus about her neck and was faithful to the church, which never did anything for her except take her money from the collection plate and call her a sinner to her face."
"The devil knows that only those with the courage to risk their soul for love are entitled to have a soul, even if God does not."
"Only the devil wants man to have a wide range of lightweight and comfortable styles to choose from."
"Ig retreated, backing for the door, for daylight."
"The soul would be no good to the devil if it could be destroyed."
"His mother’s Caddy maybe, with her in it. The very thought made his pulse racy and strange in a way fantasies of Merrin couldn’t match."
"He dreamed that Merrin was naked in his bed, and he sat on top of her arms and held her down while he forced a funnel into her mouth, a red plastic funnel, and then poured gasoline into it."
"The both of them were quiet for a while, both of them on the phone but saying nothing."
"Lee is out walking on the fence. I told him not to. I said he’d pay the devil for it, but he can’t help himself."
"I escaped. I climbed the tree and got away. I finally found my way back, Ig. I’m okay. I’m where it’s safe."
"You ought to ask for your money back. You got gypped. You’re just packaging. Just a good-looking box with nothing in it."
"I’m going to die anyway. Why do you want me to suffer? Why don’t you just stand back and let it happen?"
"I think I’m coming down with something. Don’t worry about it. As long as we don’t tongue each other, you won’t catch it."
"I think that would be cheating. You’re saying you want to make a cheater out of me?"
"I’m sure he fantasizes about other girls now."
"You’re the best damn man for coming to see me, but should've told me you were on the way."
"I thought we were going to talk about my residency. Instead, he got us a two-hundred-dollar bottle of wine and told me he wanted to rent me a place in Back Bay."
"Sounds like a lot of work for a hot afternoon."
"It would be fun. Be a hell of a good time."
"But not as refreshing as a gin and tonic."
"No one lived here anymore. No one had lived here in months."
"How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime."
"It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can't get out of, but I think this is very usual in life."
"She read Gabriel García Márquez and Michael Chabon and John Fowles and Ian McEwan."
"Sometimes I want so bad to leave her, but she doesn’t have anyone else."
"She was in so much pain, it made her say awful things."
"You want to remember how they lived, but the bad stuff kind of crowds out the rest."
"You're so excited to go to England, to be up to your neck in the world."
"I want you to remember what was good in me, not what was most awful."
"You don’t know how hard it is not to talk about these things with you."
"I can hurt you just enough to push you away."
"The people you love should be allowed to keep their worst to themselves."
"The old skin had burned away, and the new skin beneath was a deeper, richer shade of carmine."
"He had left the Tree House of the Mind in flames, had burned down heaven, but the cherry still stood undamaged."
"It's a miracle. We both. Got out. Of this. Alive."
"There's only room for one hero in this story—and everyone knows the devil doesn’t get to be the good guy."
"By some trick of optics, the headlights of Lee’s Caddy fell upon him and cast a vast, looming, four-story-high shadow against the boiling smoke."
"He did not lose a step but started straight up the burning ladder of its branches."
"He was right; there was a celebration under way—a wedding party, his wedding party—and his bride awaited him there, with her hair aflame, naked but for a loose wrap of fire."
"Fox was still hoping he’d come back, had issued a statement that in the aftermath of his brother’s murder Terry had opted to take a professional sabbatical."
"Most of the time, at least when the sun was up, Terry really believed it was what had happened."
"It’s funny, though. Sometimes…sometimes he’s so close it’s like I might turn around and see him. Grinning at me."