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1 " He ascended the mountain in darkness, no lamplight, a world black and silver and blue. The moon lay scattered through the woods in blades, glowing palely, the wind rising now and again to moan through the trees. The trail scrawled ever upward, toward the looming darkness of the mountain's peak. Above it all the sea of night, the strange ornamentation of stars. "
― Taylor Brown , Gods of Howl Mountain
2 " You like to think that people, in general, and I mean on the scale of generations, are learning from their mistakes, getting better. But with what all I seen, I don't know if I could believe that. "
― Taylor Brown , Fallen Land
3 " He found Granny on the porch, asleep. Her chin sat on her chest, rising and falling with her breath. He gathered her up in his arms, light as a girl, and carried her inside to her room. He covered her in her old handed-down quilt. The outer layers were burnished to a luster over decades of sleeping flesh, the inner batting composed of older blankets still. He tucked it under her feet, her elbows and shoulders, and went out into the den and opened the door of the wood stove. A mouth of red coals. He added two lengths of the seasoned white oak they kept stacked on the porch, hot-burning wood for cold nights, and stoked it to a fury before stepping outside. "
4 " Christ's father let him die on that cross. I understand why he done it. But Christ never had no granny like me. "
5 " It wasn’t dying that she feared, it was dying bad: leaving her grandboy alone in the world, unprotected, his wounds unhealed. Death, which walked ever through these mountains, knew she would not go down easy. "
6 " You die down there, you better hope I live a real long time. Because that's all the goddamn peace you're gonna get. "
7 " Sometimes, when I'm falling asleep, I think of breaking the latches on every lion and tiger cage in the world. Those cats streaming like fire and lightning into the night. Maybe, if we were forced to feel like prey again, like animals, we'd have a little more respect for the rest of the creatures we share this rock with. "
― Taylor Brown , Pride of Eden
8 " Prayed and prayed. Not to the church-god, exactly. To her own. One that lived closer, up on the mountain, perhaps. For here was a place fit for a god to live, not in any building or book. Here she was understood. She was wicked, sure, but no hypocrite. She had fought every day of her life, same as the beasts of the field. The bloody Christ nailed naked and roaring to the cross—his bones iron-split, his body whip-flayed to the meat—he was hard as they come. Surely he prized grit, a game heart. Same as she did. "
