Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas Quotes

“Remember to use positive affirmations. I am not a dork is not one of them.”

“When I was 5, he said, my family forgot & left me at the fair. I wandered around in the bright sounds & smells of hot sawdust & cotton candy for hours. It was already too late by the time my parents found me. I haven’t been fit for decent society since.”

“She always camouflaged herself as a crowd. I’ve never been lonely, she said, but sometimes it’s hard to think above the noise.”

“She left pieces of her life behind her everywhere she went. It’s easier to feel the sunlight without them, she said.”

“There was a single blue line of crayon drawn across every wall in the house. What does it mean? I asked. A pirate needs the sight of the sea, he said and then he pulled his eye patch down and turned and sailed away.”

“I spent a long time trying to find my center until I looked closely at it one night & found it had wheels and moved easily in the slightest breeze. So now I spend less time sitting and more time sailing. ”

“I used to believe my father about everything but then I had children myself & now I see how much stuff you make up just to keep yourself from going crazy.”

“Waiting for the pen to dry up so he can start fresh with thoughts that are worth new ink.”

“I was waiting for the longest time, she said. I thought you forgot. It is hard to forget, I said, when there is such an empty space when you are gone.”

“I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand & the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep & there are no words for that.”

“She waved at all the people on the train & later, when she saw they didn’t wave back, she started singing songs to herself & it went that way the whole day & she couldn’t remember having a better time in her life.”

“Don’t you hear it? She asked & I shook my head no & then she started to dance & suddenly there was music everywhere & it went on for a very long time & when I finally found words all I could say was thank you. ”

“I like geography best, he said, because your mountains & rivers know the secret. Pay no attention to boundaries.”

“She told me once that the year she went to England she painted her buttons yellow so she would remember what the sun felt like.”

“Is there a lot of stuff you don’t understand? she said & I said pretty much the whole thing & she nodded & said that’s what she thought, but it was nice to hear it anyways and we sat there on the porch swing, listening to the wind & growing up together.”

“I still fly a lot in my dreams, she told us, but I try to stay close to the ground. At my age, a fall can be pretty serious.”

“The clock is a conspiracy & a crime against humanity and I would not own one except I miss appointments without it.”

“When she played her music even the night demons stopped their work & it took them some time to remember what it was they were doing & the best of them had no stomach for it for a long time after that.”

“When I first discovered the moon, he said, I gave it a different name. But everyone kept calling it the moon. The real name never caught on.”

“I buried a nickel under the porch when I was 8, she said, but one day my grandma died & they sold the house & I never got to go back for it. A nickel used to mean something, I said.She nodded. It still does, she said & then she started to cry.”