Kevin Wilson Quotes & Sayings

I know why you picked that movie,' he told her. Annie smiled and said, 'It fits our life in a few ways, I guess.' Buster pointed at the screen, which was now blank. 'It shows you that you have to stay vigilant to find a missing person, even when people tell you not to, that it's possible to bring them back from the dead.' Annie shook her head. 'I picked it because it shows that after you bring someone back from the dead, you get to kill them yourself. — Kevin Wilson

Short stories, for me, it's like you step inside this brand new car and you drive it and you drive it into a tree and you walk away from it. — Kevin Wilson

They stood, a family, and walked out of the mall, into the sunlight, seeking to rearrange the shape of their surroundings, to blow something up and watch all the tiny pieces resettle around them like falling snow. — Kevin Wilson

When she called her brother, Buster said that she should climb out the window of the bathroom and run away, which was his solution to most problems. — Kevin Wilson

Criticism is like dissecting a dead frog," Caleb said when the book was published. "They're examining all the guts and shit and organs, when the thing that really matters, whatever it was that animated the body, has long since left. It does nothing for the art. — Kevin Wilson

I grew up not reading fiction; I watched movies and read comic books, and one of the ways I taught myself to think about narrative was through film. — Kevin Wilson

Was this how trauma worked? she wondered. Those closest to it remained dumbfounded by the fact that those who weren't present could derive meaning from it? — Kevin Wilson

What you'll find, I think, is that the things you most want to avoid are the things that make you feel the greatest when you actually do them. — Kevin Wilson

I don't think I can keep looking at this stuff, Buster," she informed him, handing the camera to her brother. "It makes me want to drink either more alcohol or none, and I can't imagine either possibility. — Kevin Wilson

On the opening night of the Hazzard County High School production of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Buster was going to play Romeo. His sister, Annie, was to play Juliet. Other than Buster, no one backstage seemed to understand that this was a problem. "Let me ask you something, Buster," said Mr. Delano, the high school drama teacher. "Have you heard of the phrase the show must go on?" Buster nodded. "Well," Mr. Delano continued, "this is the kind of moment for which that phrase was coined. — Kevin Wilson

She could not smash anything without breaking herself. — Kevin Wilson

Buster admired the skill, loved any action that seemed to be purely muscle memory, disconnected from the brain, which was something he could hardly fathom. His brain always interrupted the actions of his body, interjecting questions and concerns. — Kevin Wilson

But do you enjoy it?" Annie asked. Raven stared at Annie's reflection in the mirror. "I don't hate it," Raven said. "You spend enough time with anything, that's all you can really ask for. — Kevin Wilson

These weird thoughts come into my head, and I don't even really want to think about it, but I can't let go of it until I take it as far as I can, until I reach some kind of ending, and then I can move on. That's what writing is like for me. — Kevin Wilson

She is prettier than her picture had prepared me for, blond curls, big blue eyes, like a fake child that someone would make in order to convince people to have children. — Kevin Wilson

Again,' he said and, without waiting for an answer, ran into the growing dark without fear, every single part of his body overwhelmed with the task of being alive. — Kevin Wilson

He would teach himself to dislike what he actually liked, to approve of what he did not totally understand, in the hopes that he would come out the other side with something that resembled inspiration, something that would make him more famous than Chris Burden or even Hobart Waxman. — Kevin Wilson

He felt certain that he was a failure, every artistic endeavor ending with his own surprise at how little had come from it. Perhaps that was how life worked, the expectation of success after each failure the engine that kept the world turning. Perhaps retrogression was an artistic endeavor in itself. Perhaps he might sink so far that he would find himself, somehow, returned to the surface. — Kevin Wilson

Conventional lives are the perfect refuge if you are a terrible artist. — Kevin Wilson

[S]he found it impossible to move, the weight of her failure keeping her anchored to the sofa. — Kevin Wilson

Great art is difficult," Caleb said. After a few moments, he said, "But I don't understand why it has to be so difficult sometimes. — Kevin Wilson

Office 365 is Microsoft's cloud based service and is a subscription-based version of Office 2013. Unlike any of the traditional Office suites such as Office 2010, Office 365 allows you to install Office applications on up to five different computers. It includes some additional features, such as Office on Demand, 20 GB of additional online storage space through SkyDrive, and the option to install Office 2011 on Mac computers. — Kevin Wilson

If I can't find something on this plate to eat, that's my fault," she replied. — Kevin Wilson

I understand that art is a necessary component of a civilized society, but you cannot just go around shooting people. That's going to be a problem. — Kevin Wilson

The simplest things are the hardest to understand. — Kevin Wilson

Buster sat on the curb in front of the college, waiting for his sister to pick him up. To pass the time, he skimmed the stories of the creative writing students. One was about a wild party and the story consisted almost entirely of a detailed explanation of a drinking game called Flip 'N Chug that seemed, to Buster, to be too complicated to facilitate the simple goal of getting drunk. — Kevin Wilson

She's got a way of making a man feel guilty for certain things he'd never feel bad about on his own, like watching someone shoot himself in the face. — Kevin Wilson

You are very sweet," she told him after a year of dating, as they shared dessert at a restaurant, "but it's like your family trained you to react to the world in a way that was so specific to their art that you don't know how to interact with people in the real world. You act like every conversation is just a buildup to something awful. — Kevin Wilson

I don't know what I'm saying, really, but I guess it's like having a kid, though I don't have any kids. It's yours, you made it, and no matter what happens, you have that pride of ownership. You love it, even it it didn't amount to much. — Kevin Wilson

I grew up reading not-serious literature, like comic books and pulp novels, so my instinct is to amuse the reader and entertain. — Kevin Wilson

Children do have the potential to kill art. But now I think they kill the bad art. At least that is what my son has done for me. — Kevin Wilson

When I come back, we'll pretend like this never happened. We'll head to Wyoming and get back to what we do best.' Annie had no idea what it was that they did best; the two of them together seemed below average in all categories. — Kevin Wilson

It was hard to see where he was going, and he was careful not to damage the camera, so expensive that his father made him name it (Carl), so he would treat it more carefully. — Kevin Wilson

Even awful people can be polite for a few minutes," their father told them. "Any longer than that and they revert to the bastards they really are. — Kevin Wilson

His writing had become, like a stash of rare and troubling pornography, something that must be kept hidden, an obsession that other people would be mystified to discover. — Kevin Wilson

It is strangely wonderful to feel the lack of something instead of believing that it was never there in the first place. — Kevin Wilson

It had all been fake, a choreographed event, but they could not escape the dread that rattled inside their chests. It was a testament to their proficiency and talent as artists. They had affected themselves with the authenticity of the moment. — Kevin Wilson

Annie took another sip of the vodka, letting the alcohol seep through her system, turning bad ideas into good ones. — Kevin Wilson

Don't you see? The things we once loved do not change, only our belief in them ... You are left with the only things that any of us have in the end. The things we keep inside of ourselves, that grow out of us, that tell us who we are. — Kevin Wilson

I have a kind of unhealthy obsession with movies. — Kevin Wilson

Art, if you loved it, was worth any amount of unhappiness and pain. If you had to hurt someone to achieve those ends, so be it. If the outcome was beautiful enough, strange enough, memorable enough, it did not matter. It was worth it. — Kevin Wilson

That does not surprise me,' Annie said and once again hung up the phone thinking that she had chosen to surround herself with people who were, for lack of a better term, retarded. — Kevin Wilson

Buster was not used to this experience, physical desire that was actually fulfilled. In his entire life, he had kissed five women. One of them had been his sister. This was, Buster understood, a terrible percentage. He could count on one hand the number of times he'd had sex and still have enough fingers left over to make complicated shadow puppets. — Kevin Wilson

He tried to think of all the people in his life as chemicals, the uncertainty of mixing them together, the potential for explosions and scarring. — Kevin Wilson

Up to this point, all I knew were beaten paths, tattooed with footprints, and I had come to the understanding that they were not much fun to travel because so many people were waiting for you at the end, wondering what took you so long. — Kevin Wilson

My parents were distrustful of the outside world. They didn't think much good came out of it ... The outside world was this strange place that was not so much dangerous as not as interesting as what went on in the house. — Kevin Wilson

Annie, no stranger to disappointment, felt the hope break down inside her body and disperse without any lingering effects. — Kevin Wilson

The most likely victim of spontaneous human combustion is a solitary woman, 75 percent of all known cases of SHC are women. I tell her that some people believe that arsonist poltergeists are to blame, that the spirits of firestarters roam the cities setting souls on fire. — Kevin Wilson

Atop a Ferris wheel, Orson Welles told Joseph Cotten how Italy's thirty years of war and terror and bloodshed had produced the Renaissance and Michelangelo, and how Switzerland's five hundred years of democracy and peace had produced, goddamn, only the cuckoo clock. — Kevin Wilson

I don't know if it's good or bad, but when I first started writing I imitated the narrative thrust of a movie. And as I worked, I learned what you can do in fiction that you can't do in movies, and vice-versa. — Kevin Wilson

What do you think I'm going to do?" she asked him.
"Whatever it is," he answered, "I think you'll be terrified when it happens. Don't let that stop you. — Kevin Wilson

With each deep, measured breath, she imagined that various parts of her body were slowly going numb, from her fingers to her hand to her wrist to her elbow to her shoulder, until she was as close to dead as she could be. It was an old Fang family technique employed before doing something disastrous. You pretended to be dead and when you came out of it, nothing, no matter how dire, seemed important. — Kevin Wilson

Wyoming, to Annie, was represented by a blank, bleak space in her imagination. It was a place she could hide. The worst that could happen would be that she would sleep with Daniel and then get eaten by a wolf. She could live with that. — Kevin Wilson

Anytime in my life when I see an accumulation of items, a title of ownership in my name, I feel my insides swell. What am I going to do with all of this? Where am I going to put it? So I get rid of it. And I feel calm again. I am a library patron, a renter without an option to buy, a Salvation Arm donator, a spring cleaner of the highest order.
Why then, why in the world, do I work here, surrounded by all of this? It's easy enough. This is art, and it is not mine. I am only looking after it while the real owners are away. Most of all, I suppose, although I may not want things, I don't mind touching them for a while. — Kevin Wilson

The toxicity of love coupled with pain can erode even the strongest heart. — Kevin Wilson

...There were no measures that truly protected against disaster; you simply held on to what mattered and hoped that you found your way to the other side. — Kevin Wilson

Buster closed his eyes, held his breath, and, before he realized that the gun had been fired, a gust of heat and wind passed over him and deconstructed the beer can atop his head, the sound of something irrevocably giving up its shape and becoming, in an instant, something new. — Kevin Wilson