Varen Quotes & Sayings

I am opposed to heart attacks and cancer and strokes the way I am opposed to sin. — Mary Lasker

You were dropped as a child, weren't you?" Varen asked her.
"Maybe once or twice," Gwen said, "but at least I wasn't raised by highly literate vampires who, every night just before bed, fed me a steady diet of dark sarcasm and gothic horror fiction."
"Every morning before bed," Varen corrected. Stepping forward, he moved toward the headstone. "We slept during the day. — Kelly Creagh

And if you ruin it I own your soul. — Kelly Creagh

I am what I it. It is what is is. — Tom Robbins

Isobel moved farther into the kitchen, not knowing whether to be relieved that her mother hadn't had an atomic meltdown, or mortified that she'd taken it upon herself to play head chef with the nearest thing Trenton High had to a Dark Lord. — Kelly Creagh

Isobel looked down at her lap, at her hands. She turned her left one over, remembering where Varen had written his number on her that first time. Those numbers were gone now, but in hindsight, he may as well have tattooed the moment onto her soul. — Kelly Creagh

You're a dream. Like everything else. — Kelly Creagh

Every man plays the fool once in his live, but to marry is playing the fool all one's life long. — William Congreve

I once compiled a list of events that frightened her, and it was quite comprehensive: very loud snoring; low-flying aircraft; church bells; fire engines; trains; buses and lorries; thunder; shouting; large cars; most medium-sized cars; noisy small cars; burglar alarms; fireworks, especially crackers; loud radios; barking dogs; whinnying horses; nearby silent horses; cows in general; megaphones; sheep; corks coming out of sparkling wine bottles; motorcycles, even very small ones; balloons being popped; vacuum cleaners (not being used by her); things being dropped; dinner gongs; parrot houses; whoopee cushions; chiming doorbells; hammering; bombs; hooters; old-fashioned alarm clocks; pneumatic drills; and hairdryers (even those used by her). — John Cleese

No," said her dad, starting to shout, "what I can't handle is you being dropped off after midnight by some kid who thinks he's a vampire!"
"And now you're dating a vampire?" Danny asked, intrigued. "You know they bite right?"
...
"How can he be a vampire when he knows so much about slayers? — Kelly Creagh

By far the greatest part of those goods which are the objects of desire, are procured by labour; and they may be multiplied, not in one country alone, but in many, almost without any assignable limit, if we are disposed to bestow the labour necessary to obtain them. — David Ricardo

I have followed holiness, I have taught truth, and I have been most in the main things; not that I thought the things concerning our times little, but that I thought none could do anything to purpose in God's great and public matters, till they were right in their conditions. — Donald Cargill

Hands quivering, she reached toward him. "Don't." He turned his back to her, facing the door. That word had stopped her once before. But not now. Not now that she had glimpsed through the funeral front of Varen's own eternal Grim Facade. Despite all the dark armor, the kohl eye liner, the black boots and chains, she saw him clearly now. She peered through the curtain of that cruel calmness, through the death stare and the vampire sentiments and angst and, behind it all, had found true beauty. — Kelly Creagh

You're one of those people who fall off a tree and never quite reach the ground. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

So." [Isobel] cleared her throat. "What are we doing?"
"We," [Varen] said at last, "are doing a project on Poe."
"Didn't he marry his cousin or something?"
"The man is a literary god and that's all you have to say? — Kelly Creagh

Isobel's face burned. Her skin tingled where he'd touched her, with an almost imperceptible electricity that she couldn't be sure if she was imagining. Like the tips of her fingers had somehow fallen asleep. — Kelly Creagh

Isobel watched as Varen's head turned slowly toward her father. She couldn't exactly tell with the sunglasses, but she somehow knew that he had to be staring down the false Poe with one of his most penetrating "you are the essence of lameness" expressions. — Kelly Creagh

She glanced down at the contents of her plate. Just tell him what it is. Simple. Look at it and say what it is. "Sloppy Joe," she managed.
"Hmm," he said, sounding doubtful. "May he rest in peace. — Kelly Creagh

In love. In love with the stoic, the sullen, the eternally morose Varen Nethers?
He would never allow it. — Kelly Creagh

He opened his palm and saw that the watch remained. Still there. Still real.
Varen looked up at the figure that stood atop the fountain.
With a howl of rage, he made it burst apart.
He fell to his knees amid the wreckage and floating dust.
Crumpling into himself, he released a choking sob, knowing that he, too, belonged to the ruin. — Kelly Creagh

Is it also true that you drank to excess?" Isobel asked, flipping to the next index card.
Poe scoffed at the question, his response simply "Nyeh."
Varen's head snapped so quickly toward her father that Isobel was surprised the sunglasses hadn't flown off.
"Well, sometimes," Poe corrected himself. Shifting, he stooped in his seat.
Varen's stare remained.
"Often," Poe growled, angling away, pulling his already tight jacket around himself even tighter. — Kelly Creagh

With the collapse of vaudeville new talent has no place to stink. — George Burns

Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we're probably not going to see. — Margaret Atwood

He brushed his thumb across her lips. I guess you're not as easy to forget as we'd hoped. — Kelly Creagh

To the Indian mind there is nothing higher than religious ideals, that this is the keynote of Indian life. — Swami Vivekananda

Isobel's head popped up. "What does 'sagacious' mean?"
"Sagacious," he said, writing, "adjective describing someone in possession of acute mental faculties. Also describing one who might, in a bookstore, think to get up and locate an actual dictionary instead of asking a billion questions. — Kelly Creagh

Morality is the object of government. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I told you you'd come," said a nearby voice, one Isobel knew well. "You said you would."
( ... )
"You shouldn't have, though," he said, and looked up, his face twisted with anger. "Even if we knew you would, you shouldn't have." He got up and began moving toward her.
"Why," he growled, "when we will only show you we are not worth it? Why, when we have no other choice but to prove to you we're not worth it? — Kelly Creagh

Please welcome Professor Varen Nethers, famous depressed dead poets historian and author of the bestselling books Unlocking your Poe-tential: A Writer's Guide, and Mo Poe Fo Yo: When You Just Can't Get Enough. — Kelly Creagh

It was then that Maxim looked at me. He looked at me for the first time that evening. And in his eyes I read the message of farewell. It was as though he leant against the side of a ship, and I stood below him on the quay. There would be other people touching his shoulder, and touching mine, but we would not see them. Nor would we speak or call to one another, for the wind and the distance would carry away the sound of our voices. But I should see his eyes and he would see mine before the ship drew away from the side of the quay. — Daphne Du Maurier

To Madeline,
This subtle second self
Sheaf of me
Can do more than you ever could.
Like you, it can leave
And go
Somewhere else.
The night splits me in two.
I disconnect
To sink, to fall, to fly
And rage
Forever
And always
Without you — Kelly Creagh

In some way, he had belonged to the deepest essence of Varen's being. All the broken pieces of himself that Varen had buried, all those bits that terrified his own mind, all accumulated into one beast, a deranged creature born out of everything he knew he wasn't supposed to do or feel. An entity made of desires and emotions and all the longings Varen could never admit to anyone - not even himself. — Kelly Creagh

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Much like books, she could tell how voiceless things had provided a brand of companionship more compatible to his nature than human friendship had ever been. These things, locked in their inanimate ways, fed him ideas, she thought. They whispered their tales to him through unmoving lips and he listened, opening himself to their world so much more than any normal passerby. That much was evident in the way he'd taken the photos, as if he'd caught each soulless thing in a candid moment of secret animation. Like they'd sensed him coming and so turned themselves his way because they knew that he held the power to translate their silence into words. — Kelly Creagh

Is - is any of this real?" she asked. "Are you real?"
He lifted a hand to her cheek, his fingers brushing her jaw.
"Even if this is a dream," he whispered, "I'm not."
Isobel's eyes widened, recognizing those words as her own, the same ones she had once uttered to him. She reached for him, her arms twining around his neck, drawing him closer so his scent poured over her, that combination of incense, citrus, and dried leaves overriding the funeral funeral smell of the crowding flowers.
"Don't leave," she breathed.
"I'm here," he whispered. "Right here. Waiting. — Kelly Creagh

Shane met him owing to the storybooks she studied to discover what attributes made one princessly - this wasn't technically a word, but she felt there should be equity in adjectives if not in life. — Thomm Quackenbush

Don't let the elegance act fool you," Varen said, drawing out his notepad. "She farts. — Kelly Creagh

For the briefest moment, they came face to face. Their eyes locked. Then he broke the stare, swiveled, sank into a sitting position, chains clanking, with his knees up.
She watched him speechlessly as he set a cooler bag between his boots, like he was settling down to a picnic or something. An image of the contents as hospital blood bags, complete with juice straws, flashed through her mind.
Unfolding her legs, she made herself as comfortable as she could on the cold outer edge of the sill. An intangible and unnameable charge electrified the space between them, and at first, neither of them said anything.
[ ... ] Finally she heard him unzip the bag and watched him pull out a small cylinder.
"I thought you might like some crappy ice cream," he said. — Kelly Creagh

People often ask, "What is the single most important environmental population problem facing the world today?" A flip answer would be, "The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem! — Jared Diamond

Wasn't he the one who sliced off his ear and mailed it to his girlfriend?"
"Van Gogh," said Varen, in a monotone that suggested he might be in pain.
"Van Gogh," Gwen said, leaning away, waving the apple. "Edgar Allan Poe. Close enough! — Kelly Creagh

He clutched the watch hard in his fist, determined to destroy it, to prove that it couldn't be real. That she hadn't come here because of him, for him.
That he hadn't done what he knew he had. — Kelly Creagh

I keep telling myself
That you're
just a girl.
Another leaf blown across my path
Destined to pass on
And shrivel into yourself
Like all the others.
Yet despite my venom
You refuse to wither
Or fade.
You remain golden throughout,
And in your gaze I am left to wonder if it is me alone
Who feels the fall. — Kelly Creagh

They know you lied. — Kelly Creagh