Monsters in a Mirror Quotes

“...for the monsters, for those who fear the monsters, for those who fear to know they are the monsters, for those who know to fear they are the monsters...”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“All drunkards are cowards, because alcohol is the most cowardly drug.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“When she asked him why he'd shot her daddy, he just shrugged and said that he'd been planning on shooting six people when he rode into town. She looked up at him, eyes wide, batting her eyelashes, feigning awe, looking on him the way that Joshua must have looked on the walls of Jericho, and asked him why six; and he said back to her: because his pistol had six bullets in it. With another shrug, as though that answered everything. And then he turned to face her, with his livid scar and gap teeth and breath that stank like the devil and hell, and the words flashed sudden through her mind, clear as if they'd been laid out on parchment: this is what the face of a free man looks like.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“We prefer our medicine to have a bit more, well, medicine.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“Me? Now? I...I'm damned. By God. Literally. I'm damned by God. I'm goddamned. Y'know what I'm saying?”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“Master so stupid that he loves paper. Loves paper more than Brewder. Paper doesn't bite him. Paper doesn't play. Brewder is better than paper. Master needs to play. Play play play. Paper makes master sad. Brewder must rescue master.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“Because if love at first sight does exist, then the idea of control is an illusion. Love at first sight - if you really think about it, it's a horrifying concept. It means that our species is composed of nothing beyond a series of chemical impulses.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“Her neurological reboot didn't take long, but it was long enough for the man to sit bolt upright and start shrieking 'END THE FED! END THE FED!”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“The Commander-in-Chief drummed his fingers morosely upon the Resolute desk. Tap tap tap. Tink tink tink. His fingernail tapped against something metal. He scowled at the papers and doohickeys spread out before him, at the paintings of other Presidents scowling back from the walls, at the tight-lipped busts. when he'd heard that his Office would be filled with busts, he was excited, then confused. The other officials responded to his questions with silent concern. He didn't understand them, and they sure as shit didn't understand him.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“That...this is not how moral education is supposed to work. Or math, for that matter.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“Puppy! I am puppy! Puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy!”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“The door flung open, and the President's daughter burst into the room. 'Daddy!' she cried, unfazed by his lack of pants.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“Against all wisdom that I have acquired in my life thus far, I'm going to investigate.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“Who the fuck would try to steal a placenta?”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“Hearken to my speech, boy - all Golden-Folk be as we ere long. Once we shone brightly, gliding through the leaves of the forest and the brush of the desert, plain to eye only a flurry of green and gold, green and gold. One day now and one day soon, we all fade to gray.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“Who wants reality? I can get that for free. That's the whole point. I kind of have to.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“Copulation of serpents determined my destiny. Boyish, unmanly, I ventured, adventured my way into forests primeval; glanced down in the dirt, in the dirt-trodden path, where I witnessed the scaly sinews of snakes intertwining in love...”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“You had some gall, to call me back - that call, it turned my bile black - it's probably a kind of folly - making me so melan chole -”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“You'd be surprised what I can understand, pal. Words are important. If you knew anything about magic, you'd understand that. After all, that's all magic really is - words. And fucking people in the dark. You understand that, don't you?”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“See, that's the problem with you kids and your iPods and your micropayments - nobody understands the concept of a concept album anymore. Everything's got to be in bite-size pieces. You've got to take a moment to reflect on the fact that it's impossible to say anything meaningful in such an abbreviated form.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“Death for a noble cause, I understand, but...death for its own sake? Death as the...as the noble cause? That's not a good answer, either. It's not as bad as theirs, not as bad as those who are marching against you out there, but that...the fact that it's the worst answer doesn't make it a good answer. Isn't...isn't worshiping the inevitability of death just, like, just another bullshit way of trying to have the illusion of control over it?”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“Don't you understand? If that's the case, then - then everything is dicated by random chance! Somewhere, there's a universe where you - for whatever reason - you didn't come looking for me, and I - I slit my throat. And who's to say that this universe is somehow better than that one? How can we claim that we live in a moral universe, and that every other one is immoral?”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“I'm a time traveler too, you know, anyone my age is, we just had to do it the old-fashioned way, one day at a time. You can die in the same place you were born, but live long enough and you'll still learn all about culture shock.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“How is the Presidency treating you?"
"It sucks! Everyone hates me! Why does everyone hate me?"
"Because Man was bestowed with reason, and I can't circumvent free will."
"Buh?"
"Yeah, exactly.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“He had seen dogs and ponies feverishly coupling with bored young girls, and overfed women with rats and mice crawling across their brown bare skin, and felt nothing; but at the sight of vertebrae pushing against the back of her neck, pushing between her perfectly symmetrical shoulder blades as she inclined her head forward, brow furrowed, his mouth went dry, and he felt the planet sliding beneath his feet.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“The cancer patient doesn't treasure his tumor, simply because it's a part of himself; so why should I treasure the organs that are killing my immortal soul? Christ isn't ordering you to pluck out your eyes: he's saying that he knows, that if you knew what he knew you would know that it would be better for you, in the long run. That you would want to if you knew.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“Desist! I have never been one to delight in religion, but even my ignorance knows that the practice of holiness means to improve human nature. This is not religion, but carnal indulgence. To drink, and to fornicate, mocking the state, as it calls you...when enemies bang on the gates, will you sing, and imbibe, and make love while they slaughter? To love, instead of to fight? For the power of flowers, ridiculous garlands you weave in your hair will not save you. The making of love won't protect you from war, from a bloody and terrible war. To have peace would be wonderful. Peace at all costs is submission, is slavery, shame worse than death.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“I must strive to remain rational. For surely reason, and reason alone, is the faculty which divides us from the lower beasts of this earth, who grunt and crawl about on all fours; it is the capacity that ennobles the human spirit above all others, if the human spirit is indeed a thing that can be ennobled - a supposition that I have of late been given copious cause to doubt. Yet still I find that I must trumpet the cause of reason, reason, human reason, above all else - if only because it was no brief time ago that I found myself bereft of its beneficence, reduced to a naked, howling, gibbering thing upon which I shudder to reflect.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“I nodded sagely, pretended to be making some sort of useful observation of the white surfaces and clear tubes and gray machines that I lacked the doctorates to comprehend, and thought about dualism. Good and evil. Man and woman. All forces and powers and principalities equal and opposite. The notion that we live in a universe with that kind of comforting, obvious ledger. That is the kind of thinking that makes people believe that the moon controls menstrual cycles, that vaginas are magic, when all they really are is blood and tissue and, in the instance of one particularly ugly case that I drink to forget about, teeth. They're impressively versatile and under the right circumstances a lot of fun, but no more or less miraculous than your twenty-ninth vertebra.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“You live in a barn, little brother; you don't understand how politics work. The power to make elections happen lies with a select few, not with the people. If the right few are pleased with you, then you're one of the good politicians. What good does the love of the people do me, if I can't get on the good side of those who matter?”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous