Devil In A Coma Quotes

It's hard to know where you are when you're trying to read a map by the light of a falling star.

Each and every time I walked out into the dark, I only ever came part of the way back.

I never joined an army, instead I fought an imaginary war my entire life and was the only casualty.

The harsh injustice of ageing and the helplessness of infirmity was more than I could take. I swore I would die before I ended up like that.

This is God's country, or so it is said, but it is also death's country - don't forget that.

Music was no longer my friend but I left my headphones on round the clock just to keep the outside noise out of my head.

I've never enjoyed being fully present, a muted reality has been the landscape I've preferred and mainly inhabited forever. Sure, feeling is good, but not too much, and if someone is able to get away with suffering devastating loss, massive regret, heartache, physical agony, mental instability, isolation, humiliation, abuse, incarceration, depression, tragedy etc. with a blanket of chemical protection, then who can say it's wrong?

I didn't leave a trace of myself with them, but they stained me.

I turn back to the page to obsessively invent still more damaged and heroic versions of myself before the fire dies out or the well runs dry, constructing imaginary worlds.

This illness also seemed to unlock something in my subconscious, and I was dreaming more than I had ever remembered doing before.

I've never gone to bed with any monsters, I only woke up with a few dozen or so.

Over the years, Skye sampled every drug she could find, and like many addicts, had a working knowledge of pharmacology. She snorted coke and swallowed pills. She took downers—orange and red Seconal, red and ivory Dalmane, Miltown, Librium, Luminal, Nembutal, and Quaaludes. Blue devils, red birds, purple hearts. Enough of them sank her in a kind of coma, where she watched her own limbs suspended in front of her in syrup. For a party, there was Benzedrine, rushing in her veins and making her talk for an hour in one long sentence. Day to day, she carried yellow tablets loose in her pockets, Dilaudid and Percodan, and chewed them in the back of classrooms. But her favorite was the greatest pain reliever of them all, named for the German word for hero.

Nearly every single affair was ended by then woman I was with, not me, and they often left with another man and a knife in my back, which I always had coming. I was a natural at losing, but as soon as one thing ended I was already into something else.

I began to have fantasies in which I walked to the centre of a huge field surrounded by forest with trees a mile high, emptied several cans of petrol everywhere, threw a lit Zippo into the grass and then stood in the middle of it waiting to be immolated.

The dysfunctional home life I enjoyed made me place me reliance strictly on myself and nobody else, I trusted no one and no one should have trusted me either, I was only in it for yours truly and stood directly in the centre of the world, the only wolf in the pack.

The myopia that largely dogged me my entire life kept me rooted in the here and now, and hardly anything else ever crossed my mind, especially if it was to take place in some far-off distant future never-never land. Such places did not exist in my limited scope of reality.

Some people experience freedom in being completely unhinged and lost out on the flip-side of polite society but it takes some balls, a battleship full of psychic willpower or flat-out insanity along with a shitload of stamina and a grip of self-hatred, but no brains at all to find it.

The only memories I could muster were all attached to something I'd rather forget. The future was an unpromising unknown, and I could only look to the long-dead past for comfort, but it seemed as though there was not one unsullied moment to grab onto. I had spent my life in the shadows, facilitating my own and others undoing, taking on nearly any dark task that came my way, every action a means to an end, the end being oblivion.

The surprise and relief of being held so securely by a friend she had not expected to see overwhelmed Evie completely. She felt the pain in her eyes and throat sharpen, until she could no longer hold back her sobs. Lillian tightened her embrace. “You should have seen my reaction when Annabelle and Daisy told me what you had done,” she said, patting Evie’s back firmly. “I nearly dropped to the floor, and then I called down all sorts of curses on St. Vincent’s head for taking advantage of you. I was tempted to come here and shoot him myself. But it appears that someone else spared me the trouble.” “I love him,” Evie whispered between sobs. “You can’t,” Lillian said flatly. “Yes, I love him, and I’m going to lose him just as I did my father. I can’t bear it…I’ll go mad.” Lillian sighed and muttered, “Only you could love such a vile, selfish peacock, Evie. Oh, I’ll admit, he has his attractions…but you would do better to fix your affections on someone who could actually love you back.” “Lillian,” came Evie’s watery protest. “Oh, all right, I suppose it’s not sporting to disparage a man when he’s bedridden. I’ll hold my tongue for the time being.” She drew back and looked into Evie’s splotched face. “The others wanted to come, of course. But Daisy is unmarried and therefore can’t even sneeze without a chaperone, and Annabelle tires easily because of her condition. Westcliff and I are here, however, and we’re going to make everything all right.” “You can’t,” Evie sniffled. “His wound…he’s so ill…he’s fallen into a c-coma, I think…” Keeping her arm around Evie, Lillian turned to the earl and asked in a strong voice that was entirely inappropriate for a sickroom, “Is he in a coma, Westcliff?” The earl, who was bending over Sebastian’s prone form, threw her a wry glance. “I doubt anyone could be, with the noise the pair of you are making. No, if it were a coma, he couldn’t be roused. And he definitely stirred just now when you shouted.” “I didn’t shout, I called out,” Lillian corrected. “There is a difference.” “Is there?” Westcliff asked mildly, pulling the covers down to Sebastian’s hips. “You raise your voice so often, I can’t tell.” A laugh rustled in Lillian’s throat, and she released Evie.

More and more this was reminiscent of an unending stretch in country jail that I couldn't shake, with my trial date being intentionally undetermined, constantly moved around just to keep me inside. It felt like the longer I was kept here the worse I got, not the other way around.

To avoid paying debts is to ask for trouble, I've learned that much in my time here.

My interest in music was non-existent. I never put on a record or picked up a guitar or sat at the keyboard and didn't care if I ever did again.

Lucifer’s last words in heaven may have been “Non serviam,” but none has served the Almighty so dutifully, since His sideshow in the clouds would never draw any customers if it were not for the main attraction of the devil’s hell on earth. Only catatonics and coma patients can persevere in a dignified withdrawal from life’s rattle and hum. Without a “yes” in our hearts, nothing would be done. And to be done with our existence en masse would be the most ambitious affirmation of all.