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Quote by Ocean Vuong

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Time Is a Mother

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Ocean Vuong

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“One of the reasons I love Murder is that victims are, as a general rule, dead... I don't make a habit of sharing this, in case people take me fore a sicko or- worse-a wimp, but give me a dead child, any day, over a child sobbing his heart out while you make him tell you what the bad man did next. Dead victims don't show up outside HQ to beg for answers, you never have to nudge them into reliving every hideous moment, and you never have to worry, and you never have to worry about what it'll do to their lives if you fuck up. They stay put in the morgue, light-years beyond anything I can do right or wrong, and leave me free to focus on the people who sent them there.”

MurderMorgue
Book:Broken Harbour
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“I wanted to write an adventure story, not, it's true, I really did. I shall have failed, that's all. Adventures bore me. I have no idea how to talk about countries, how to make people wish they had been there. I am not a good travelling salesman. Countries? Where are they , whatever became of them. When I was twelve I dreamed of Hongkong. That tedious, commonplace little provincial town! Shops sprouting from every nook and cranny! The Chinese junks pictured on the lids of chocolate boxes used to fascinate me. Junks: sort of chopped-off barges, where the housewives do all their cooking and washing on deck. They even have television. As for the Niagara Falls: water, nothing but water! A dam is more interesting; at least one can occasionally see a big crack at its base, and hope for some excitement. When one travels, one sees nothing but hotels. Squalid rooms, with iron bedsteads, and a picture of some kind hanging on the wall from a rusty nail, a coloured print of London Bridge or the Eiffel Tower. One also sees trains, lots of trains, and airports that look like restaurants, and restaurants that look like morgues. All the ports in the world are hemmed in by oil slicks and shabby customs buildings. In the streets of the towns, people keep to the sidewalks, cars stop at red lights. If only one occasionally arrived in a country where women are the colour of steel and men wear owls on their heads. But no, they are sensible, they all have black ties, partings to one side, brassières and stiletto heels. In all the restaurants, when one has finished eating one calls over the individual who has been prowling among the tables, and pays him with a promissory note. There are cigarettes everywhere! There are airplanes and automobiles everywhere.”

CountryAdventureTravelTrainHotelAirplaneAutomobileRestaurantAirportMorgue
Book:The Book of Flights
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“The Basement Morgue by Stewart Stafford A reluctant errand to a basement morgue, No mortal knew what things lurked there, The elevator shuddered to a halt, opening, To a scattered boneyard of patient beds. Totem tchotchkes of a broken system, Dead corridors stretched left and right, A charged cold-sweat silence hung, As a flaccid desk stethoscope rattled. Buried my nose in my clipboard; Had to find their machine - now! A gurney wheeled itself past me, Disappearing into an anteroom. A hanging skeleton lunged at me— Spindly fingers choked me into blackness. Rousing to bright lights, blinding me; Icy steel drawers swallowed my screams. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

HorrorGhostsHospitalDark PoetryGothic FictionMedical ThrillerFlash FictionPsychological HorrorMorgueCreepypasta
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Even people whose lives have been made various by learning sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible - nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas - where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories.”

TravelExileLiving Abroad
Book:Silas Marner
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