Michael Cisco Quotes & Sayings

I was told, or read, that everyone visits Veciofeni's cave sooner or later. He stood in there and wept himself to death, evidently, and this manner of dying, so gently incremental, brought about the perfect preservation of his body as a consequence of his mummy-like dehydration and the saturation of his person with his own lachrymal salt. — Michael Cisco

Poetry restores language by breaking it, and I think that much contemporary writing restores fantasy, as a genre of writing in contrast to a genre of commodity or a section in a bookstore, by breaking it. Michael Moorcock revived fantasy by prying it loose from morality; writers like Jeff VanderMeer, Stepan Chapman, Lucius Shepard, Jeffrey Ford, Nathan Ballingrud are doing the same by prying fantasy away from pedestrian writing, with more vibrant and daring styles, more reflective thinking, and a more widely broadcast spectrum of themes. — Michael Cisco

There is no perfection but in chance — Michael Cisco

Anyone could say that a miracle is something impossible, but they say it thoughtlessly, mindlessly, because most people have such weak imaginations they couldn't possibly understand what they're saying when they say that a miracle is something impossible. Ask anyone what that means, what it means to see a miracle, and they will say that it's something impossible, but they mean that a miracle is something formerly believed to be impossible that turns out not to be, not to be impossible, in other words, but possible after all. If this were really true, then miracles would be the most ordinary things in the world, the most uninspiring things in the world, and what can one expect from people who have never been anything but ordinary and uninspired. — Michael Cisco

Echoing streets melt into dark autumn rooms - melt to black plastic bags inflated by the wind and spinning on playground blacktop like free-floating punctuation ... the horizon is just a line and past it there's only black dark ... that rolls toward her as she walks in its direction ... smooth-worn wooden chairs at the bakery where ella sits tea on the table in front of her, it's getting dark but the girl behind the counter hasn't turned on a single light yet ... Ella animal staring into the street: Did I ever touch him? — Michael Cisco

Although unavailable for analysis the moment it happens, being struck a violent blow on the head is a very interesting experience. — Michael Cisco

I learned always to avoid glorious campaigns - everyone is more likely to die in glorious campaigns. — Michael Cisco

Cadavers and spirits are human refuse, and they are absurdly difficult to dispose of properly. When someone dies, a small gang of specialists is required to remove and inter the body in such a way that it can always be located precisely at any time while preventing it from ever appearing again. — Michael Cisco

Sometimes I lie awake and hear noises in the house, and despite myself I'm frightened. Then I hear some familiar sound - a clock strikes, or a train whistles somewhere - and my fear abates. But why should those sounds comfort me, and others frighten me? Why couldn't a ghost make the sound of a train? — Michael Cisco

The wind seems to be blowing through the gaps in the conversation like the rushing of empty space. — Michael Cisco

Why is the station so far out of the city limits anyway? Most likely a collusion between the builders of stations and the builders of long roads. — Michael Cisco

She starkly sees her inanimate future blocked out before her right through to her own end - without him ...
... and worst of all, she knows she will be asked about him and be called upon to talk about him and tell the story again and again ... her jaws will work without end with all that talking her jaws will chew up the ravel of all her remaining life, telling the same story until it becomes bare and alien and something blunt to her; more the belonging of other people, and no longer hers.
Now she has to live ordinarily ... she's going to have to numb herself if she's going to go on - no going on from this point without getting numb. — Michael Cisco

The sky all at once is overhead dim and grey, puzzle of blocks sprawl, their own horizon; the city looks like a cemetery full of weak daylight, cool and a little wrong, making Ella feel a little put upon, like leap-year day - nothing in itself, but a nudge jostling every other day. — Michael Cisco

I could say she looks like da Vinci's "Lady with Ermine" if there had ever been such a thing. — Michael Cisco

What it must feel like to lie back with cut wrists in a warm bath, a voluptuous dwindling feeling. — Michael Cisco

With great profundity I note the pleasure one gets or takes in pushing wheeled objects, as opposed to the depression involved in pulling them. — Michael Cisco

My exuberance breaks things, breaks me. It marches me up to people and elicits from me declarations of love, if only to give me the satisfaction of disappointment, to know that I am in love. I am forever building up this edifice of love and happiness, which would get to be as big as the world, or bigger, if it weren't for the storms, eruptions, convulsions, that tear it all down again. When any of it comes down, it all comes down. Although these catastrophic failures deeply wound me, still I am grateful for the opportunity to rebuild, and to renew my trust with the world. I do everything on the scale of the world, as the only thing commensurate to my happiness. — Michael Cisco

Eyes, black and glistening like deep wells, narrow to two happy crescents — Michael Cisco