Still Mostly True Quotes

“I think my life would be easier, she said,
if I could just get my selves to agree on something.
”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“My grandmother used to say life was so much easier when you were simple-minded.
It’s taken me almost my whole life to understand what she meant.”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“It's not surrendering to the Universe, he told me, if all you're doing is sitting around waiting for it to turn out like you hope.
—Partial Surrender”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“Once upon a time there was a boy who knew what he was going to be from the very moment he was born. As soon as he was able to talk, he told everyone, I am a builder of dreams. No one in his family had any idea what that meant, except maybe his Aunt Dorothy, who knew about dreams & how they form you into the thing you’re going to be, even when you think you have other plans.

The rest of his family did things like work with numbers & fix old cars & bake bread in a bakery. When he first told them what he was going to be, they thought it was cute & then, when it didn’t stop, it was something not to be mentioned at family gatherings & finally, it was something that would lead to personal suffering if he didn’t start getting his head on straight, by god. So, he stopped saying it out loud, but he never forgot & when he got older, he moved away & his family told the neighbors he was working as a manager & every one nodded & was pleased that he’d finally come around to viewing life as it was & not how you wish it would be.

But he didn’t really care because he was building things of air & sunlight & the laughter of children & the sharp smell of lighter fluid at a summer barbecue & the flash of color on the throat of a hummingbird & all of them were things that had no real name, but people felt them all the same. They felt them all the same...”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“Our mailman was a dance teacher at night & I would watch him sometimes to see if he would deliver mail differently than the others. I expected to see him leap over bushes with his toes pointing like arrows, but all he ever did was walk.”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“He is self-conscious because everyone knows he has wings but they've never seen him fly. Now & then there will be a feather in odd places or maybe a footprint to show he was there. All in all, he thinks it's nobody else's business what he does with his free time.”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“The secret is not in your hand or your eye or your voice, my aunt told me once. The secret is in your heart. Of course, she said, knowing that doesn't make it any easier.
—Secret Heart”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“I've always seen hidden meanings in everything. Whenever I used to do those puzzles in children's magazines, the ones where you're supposed to find all the hidden pictures, I'd never find the right ones. I'd say I found the griffin, and the Wesselman steam engine, and the missing little finger of the mummy of Tut, and everyone would give me a strange look and say, All you're looking for is a yellow duck.

[…] work up to the voices of places you can only imagine. Ask where to find the griffin, and the Wesselman steam engine, and the little finger of Tut. I know they're out there, and usually in the strangest of places.

And if you find the yellow duck, let me know. That's the one I always miss.”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“He kept a piece of algae behind his ear to remind him of his roots. A million years ago every place was a little place by the sea, he would say & my mind would go blank & I would swim through the day without a care in the world & it all seemed so familiar that I knew I would go back someday to my own little place by the sea.”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“He taught me to run high on my toes. I will always remember his words: run proud & remember you are alive.”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“This is a pretty deep hole for putting away all the ugly things in the world. For a long time it was empty, but it started filling up really fast the last couple of years.”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“The day he first told me he was starting to disappear I didn't believe him & so he stopped & held his hand up to the sun & it was like thin paper in the light & finally I said you seem very calm for a man who is disappearing & he said it was a relief after all those years of trying to keep the pieces of his life in one place. Later on, I went to see him again & as I was leaving, he put a package in my hand. This is the last piece of my life, he said, take good care of it & then he smiled & was gone & the room filled with the sound of the wind & when I opened the package there was nothing there & I thought there must be some mistake or maybe I dropped it & I got down on my hands & knees & looked until the light began to fade & then slowly I felt the pieces of my life fall away gently & suddenly I understood what he meant & I lay there for a long time crying & laughing at the same time.
—Disappearing”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“I had a lot of dreams last night that meant something, but today I'm back to my waking life & nothing makes sense like usual.
—Usual Sense”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“These are all the street signs for this area but he keeps moving them around at night so the only people who aren't lost all the time are the children who never pay attention to signs anyway.”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“Whenever he sat in the swingset it got tangled up. He said it was demons in the steel that were drawn to the sweat & sorrow of the steelworkers across the generations. Plastic doesn't have those sorts of problems yet, he said.”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“He has a hole where his heart used to be because it fell out when he was running from scary things one night in a dream & it hurts all the time now & he doesn't know how to fix it & sometimes I think he doesn't even remember that it's gone.”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“These are bowls filled with some kind of black goop. My friend says it's the blood from the slaughterhouse but why would they leave it where innocent people could step in it? is what I said & he said that's the way meateaters think.”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“One day he decided he was more dependent on the kindness of women than he liked so he went off to hunt wild beasts with his bare hands. But all he found was a stray dog & a couple of old pigeons & it was cold & he missed the sound of soft voices, so finally he came back & never worried about it again.
—Iron John”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“They couldn't reach the cord to make it stop & so it flew about scaring the older ladies just out of church. It left behind a trail of wet feathers & a renewed sense of the presence of evil among the faithful. Once they found out who started it, everyone settled down & went back to hating the usual stuff.”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“He told me about Jesus & Arizona & the best way to make beer & I said you're a funny kind of preacher & he said it's a funny kind of world & I still remember his eyes as clear as a desert morning.
—Funny World”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings

“You have to remember to make it all over again every day, the angel said to me. Otherwise it all goes to hell.”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings