On being a rat Quotes

“I’ve never had a rat, never chased one. I chase my own tail and that’s enough. I must now make plans for the day I catch it.”

“I’m engaged in the dance of the ages and the search for a song to go with it. Though Templeton’s A Veritable Smorgasbord is a well-deserving classic, it’s a stanza too short for my morphing existence. So I write my own.”

“PLEASE TELL ME YOU KNOW OF SYLVIA PLATHConventions bleed my soulsqueeze me oldwear me grey like a headstone in transit.It’s tradition and form—fear of the unknown—driving me deadin tight spaces darkly.I cry aloudbut who can hearwhen I stand alonein the middle of an art show….”

“This piece of earth I billet grows small. Bullets of time dart past, dropping shards of opportunity at my feet. And until the rift that surrounds my decaying body clamps shut—swallows me up like so many remains—I army on, simultaneously ignoring and saving my comrades in the hole.Such is a writer’s life.”

“I read a book, am vortexed in with no escape; my face contorts, eyelids frost, breath comes short, body longs, heart stop-starts. Who’s to say too much won’t kill me? Who’s to say I care?”

“I think that’s why I write—the not knowing and the blasted good feeling I get out of it all.”

“I die with the dying light, yet shine brighter as the darkness approaches. Soon I’ll be whittled to bone and stripped clean through, nothing left but a skeleton on which to hang a hat. But have no fear, I look good in hats.”

“This world rubs me raw, scours me smooth like an SOS pad put to a grease-caked skillet. And pain: it stabs and scrapes and pulls me back to earth, my final B&B, that worm-spun cot of cool black sod.”

“Nonfiction. I didn’t choose it as much as it chose me. It squatted and birthed me one raw winter day then jerked me up and set me to scribing.”

“Today I fed him right off the bat, and only checked Facebook twice.”