Words of Wisdom, Courtesy of Charley's Characters

In most books, characters will usually say at least one thing that will linger in a reader's mind. Think Gandalf, Dumbledore, Aslan . . . you get the vibe. Even younger, less experienced characters will sometimes say things that will bury themselves into your heart and mind. Something sweet. Something innapropriately hilarious. Something tragic. Something that speaks to your soul.

. . . And then there's my characters.

I intended this to be a post about inspiring things that characters can say, and I was going to mix up my own characters' inspiring quotes with those of published authors and challenge you all to find out which ones were mine, possibly following up with an "if I can hide my own amateur creations amidst those of great writers, it's proof of the power of words and emotion and humanity and blah blah blah."

But did I find any? Oh no.

Whether it was a short story or a novel, over seven years old or something I wrote last year, part of an ancient collaborative or a difficult solo project, it seems that the denizens of my head seem to be operating on some celestial plane of thought above that of everyday humans that renders them incapable of saying anything remotely philosophical.

That, or they've been drinking some really strange coffee.

***

"Who on earth is that man?"
"I don't know . . . but he reminds me of a particularly unpleasant biscuit."

"Would that clash with my dragon-slaying appointment?"

"IT'S ON MY FACE!"

"I would compare myself to chopped liver . . . but I'm pretty sure even the gizzards get more say about what sort of stew they're thrown in than I do!"

"I feel like I just gave birth . . . through my nose."

"Do you reckon there's a world record out there for the longest distance travelled inside a giant fridge?"

"That's my name! Long and short for just the same, unless you speak Klingon, in which case you're probably very strange and I would quite like you to leave right now."

"Jumping out of windows is far more therapeutic than you'd expect, you know."

"That's some dream you had, my friend."
"I'll say - the most prophetic dream I can remember is the one where the talking goat was lecturing me about the morality of aeroplane fuselages."

"What is going on in here? Who are you? What do you want? . . . And what have you done to my teapot!"

"Am I the only one who can see the words I REALLY REALLY REALLY WANT TO STAB YOU written on her face? Because whoever did that deserves a golden Sharpie pen for their bravery. And possibly enrolment in a mental institute."

"Excellent. Now, if you would be so good as to remove me from this contraption before it dissolves my elbow, I would be eternally grateful."

"Well then, I guess that makes me the king of the jam fairies."

"I never expected eight-foot-tall, furry-eared, rabbit-shredding people to have such interesting tatse in furniture."

"Is it dead? Well, we shot it full of bullets, stabbed it through the heart, cut its head off, and reversed over it with a pickup truck . . . I think we'd better burn it, just to make sure."

"What's that?"
"It's breakfast."
"What sort of breakfast?"
"The dead kind."

***

Few of these quotes make any more logical sense in context than they do out of it.

Confused? So am I.

~ Charley R