24
" Sure that starlight will strip away the years, will fall upon a thirteen-year-old girl alone on a dirt road, a bruise on her face and the mop clenched painfully in her broken fist. The things, the nightmare things fear could claim you for. The dark hurts in the veins, the heart-deep hurts in the buried parts of the body. The faces that chase her, even now, even in the farthest fields of space where nothing grows, nothing whispers, nothing lives or dies but the first things that ever got made in the universe. She isn’t sure whether she believes in God or not, though she always told her pastor she did. She isn’t sure any woman ought to believe in God. "
― Amber Sparks , The Unfinished World and Other Stories
33
" Moon. Face not withstanding, the moon is a source of madness just the same. Or so say the police, hospital staff, and good old Pliny the Elder, who theorized that perhaps humans were so affected by the moon because they- like the tides- were made mostly of water, especially the brain. The full moon, in particular, is believed to hand us lunatics, werewolves, and criminals. The moon reaches down with silver fingers and toys with us; and we reach up and destroy the moon. "
― Amber Sparks , And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories & Other Revenges