Mysterious Skin Quotes

“It was a light that shone over our faces, our wounds and scars. It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels, basking in it. But it wasn’t, and we weren’t.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“He spoke so slowly, cobwebs could have formed between his words.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“It was Brian's blood, and for some reason I knew it was pure. No other man I'd held in my arms -and now, not even I- had blood this pure.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“I hate this stinking little butt crack of a town!”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“How in the world can you think a queer is cute? I mean, you can tell he’s a freak. You can just tell.” I advised Zelda that if she didn’t shut up, I’d gouge out her eyes and force her to swallow them.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin: A Novel

“Defenestration,” I said. “‘The act of throwing someone through a window.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin: A Novel

“There was something deranged and distinctly midwestern about a station that programmed "The Exorcist" three days prior to Christmas.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“His voice sounded vaguely grandfather like, as if his brain were crowded with knowledge!”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“No other man I'd held in my arms--and now, not even I--had blood this pure.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“Us, on the other hand, they can't kill. But we have to live with the memory of what they do. And really, it's what they do to us that's worse.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“Although it was difficult to understand it then, what I wanted was more. For the rest of my days I would want it. I would see sex everywhere, splinters shoved into each molecule of each space, saturating everything I saw and smelled and tasted and touched.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“But he’s still here, in a way I can’t explain. Oftentimes I wonder where Coach lives, what he’s doing, whether something like prison or lynch mobs or disease hasn’t killed him. But looking back it doesn’t matter. What matters is how, for the first time in my life, I felt as if I existed for something.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“At that precise moment, he might have been lying on a bed in some other state with another kid like me. For all I knew, he could have been dead. That idea seemed incredibly romantic. If I’d been alone and high, my imagination would have roamed-me dressed in black, lumbering toward Coach’s open coffin, a tear on my cheek, to center a single white lily on his motionless and impeccable chest…”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin