TITLE 13 Quotes

“A dog only got hurt if its love was repudiated, intentional or not, though it never had long to feel true sorrow in response because it never held its love back, regardless of reciprocation; the dog just tried to love you more. No other distractions such as work, home, friendships, or lovers—just the insistence of undying and unwavering affection in the truest sense of the word—asking for only a fraction of what it gave.”
― Michael A. Ferro, TITLE 13: A Novel

“Heald envied and admired a dog's existence, and it only weighed on him more when he considered the rare and undeniably questionable gift of knowing that he would die— that he was mortal. A dog could only embrace love absolutely, without hesitation, and could devote itself to it with complete and unabashed abandon, for the world was forever.”
― Michael A. Ferro, TITLE 13: A Novel

“Imagine if you will—and you will—a mushroom cloud bigger than anything that you currently see out that window. Imagine jet planes and bombers the size of apartment complexes dropping technological marvels of deconstruction upon this city, this world, all around the epicenter of a blooming death cloud. Imagine that mushroom coming to a head, knowing that it is filled with unimaginable heat and concrete, dust, papers—human faces, eyes, and brains. Gray matter filling the radioactive cloud with electricity as all that is inside us leaves us and becomes one with the mushroom. Glass will melt and connect with steel, and we will melt and connect with each other as everything that made us whole is criminally dissected and rearranged. Everything below us, from the sewer tunnels to the subway line, will be consumed into the cloud and jettisoned into the stratosphere, where it will become nothing but silken ash, hardened to a black substance, and turned back to a black dust, transfixed into a black nothing. A stinking, glowing crater all that remains of where you had your first kiss and told someone that you loved them. A mess of a world where everything you’ve ever done quickly becomes all that you’ll ever do.”
― Michael A. Ferro, TITLE 13: A Novel

“Negativity, like mass, can neither be created nor destroyed—it exists in everything.”
― Michael A. Ferro, TITLE 13: A Novel

“You know, your grandmother once told me something that the Native Americans say about dogs with different-colored eyes: they are extraordinary, for they have the ability to look upon both heaven and hell.”
― Michael A. Ferro, TITLE 13: A Novel

“Heald did not understand cats. All his life he had been a dog person, naturally averse to cats due to his allergies. Many of the women that he knew in the city had cats. It couldn’t be as simple as men being “dog people” and women being “cat people”; he knew that was too one- dimensional. Maybe something about cats’ apprehensive and complicated nature drew women to adore them, sensing a mirrored personality that had to be appreciated, or at the very least, respected. Dogs, with their fanatical, uncomplicated, and singular devotion, were everything a man could ever ask for.”
― Michael A. Ferro, TITLE 13: A Novel

“Heald smiled back at her and avoided looking into her eyes for a moment, but was drawn back into them almost immediately. They were a pale brown with hints of faint green and light blue; they had always reminded him of the colors of the earth— thousands of miles in two tiny spheres. But now they were faded and graying, like a light morning fog.”
― Michael A. Ferro, TITLE 13: A Novel

“He was acutely aware then that he was closer to his future than he was with the memories of his past.”
― Michael A. Ferro, TITLE 13: A Novel

“This was when the aging smokestacks atop the monumental factories began to shut off one by one. There were still plenty left running to keep the air over Detroit filled with that choking industrial aptitude, but you were never far from a hollowed-out factory, massive steel tubes on the roofs pointing up toward the sky with nothing left inside but dust and cobwebs. These giant pillars of concrete and metal now jutted high like extended index fingers from broken and casted hands, pointing toward something they would never touch.”
― Michael A. Ferro, TITLE 13: A Novel