Home > Author > Patrick Downes
1 " Nature has always been and always will be, as far as my tiny brain can understand, miraculous. Except, nature won't last because the world won't. "
― Patrick Downes
2 " He thought. He wrote. He read. He ran and drank milk and concrete. He was cut into two. He bled. He died. "
3 " Is the definition of a pessimist a person who only sees what he hasn't got but wants? Would an optimist never see the empty space?Or is there some other detail I'm leaving out? Is it more complicated?I don't know. It isn't always bad to see the empty space, is it? Isn't it all right to see both, the filled space and the empty space? You could be in either. I have to try and see everything. "
― Patrick Downes , Fell of Dark
4 " You want to pass, or miss a turn. You have to move, though. When you do, you’re suddenly weak. Zugzwang. "
5 " Eulogy:He thought. He wrote. He read. He ran and drank milk. A boy made of milk and concrete. He was cut in two. He bled and died.A stranger smart enough to steal a child and lock a door took the boy's life. The man cut him in half, then chewed him up. Blood and rubble.Even though the boy was dead, he dreamed up a girl with skin and hair of light taking care of him, holding his hand, He dreamed the girl gave him a kiss, and he wondered if the kiss would send him back to the world. It didn't. It kept him under. He sleeps in the box with the girl made from light. We have to forget him so we can take him with us. "
6 " Write more, read more, think more "
7 " So I stay in bed, thinking, not even reading. I write poems. I cry. I sleep. I become one with the bed, rooted. I'm sort of a mushroom. "
8 " I want to feel normal. I want to be normal. "
9 " My mother had raised me to be a gentleman. I carry bags when I can. I open doors. I stand when a woman enters the room. I offer my seat. I walk on the outside. "
10 " Husbands and wives help each other survive. They hold each other in their hearts. I've given this a lot of thought, Janet. "
11 " I had these books: The Pilgrim's Progress and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Catcher in the Rye, which I thought would have a bad ending and did. Totally boring and meaningless. Very human. "
12 " An ancient fruit tree of some kind, an apple or cherry, grows in the park a little way from here. Every March, it blooms. Ten thousand pink and white flowers bloom and shake for a week. Then, all the flowers fall, and for a while the tree stands in its own memories. "
13 " There are stacks of books everywhere, and the shelves where books live are all bowed. They'll collapse at some point. "
14 " My invisible wounds. I have no answer, no proof I bleed. But I bleed. Sure as I love my mother and you, I bleed. "
15 " Love, nothing is harder than love, nothing wants or asks more from us. Love gives us everything that's good in us. "
16 " I'd wanted to understand how my father came to fall, but I don't think it matters anymore. Or that it matters beyond the more important truth: that my father is gone, released from himself - and that we, Key and I, are free. I feel strange. I feel something I may not have felt in a long time, if ever. It feels warm. It feels easy. It feels like control. Light streams through the windows. My father's ghosts have disappeared. And I'm breathing, steadily, slowly.I'm at peace.That's what this is. It's peace. "
― Patrick Downes , Island
17 " When you play board games, you learn about your mind and other people's minds. You find out whether or not you take risks, whether or not you're a short- or long-range thinker, whether or not you like to wager. "
18 " The house fell into disrepair. Little things at first - dripping faucets and loose doors and scummy walls, a blackgreen bathroom, the annoyances and blemishes and dirt and grime people put up with without much complaining, aware that it should be better, but with no real motivation to keep up, especially when at the center of the home there's a sense of hopelessness. "
19 " I'll write and write, still my greatest comfort--. "
