Andy Duncan

North Carolina · connected South Carolina · born or raisedBorn 1964

American writer

Studied at North Carolina State University
Born in Batesburg-Leesville source
Lived in South Carolina source
Studied at University of South Carolina source

novelist, essayist, writer, poet, science fiction writer

Quotations with a citation

“Ain’t my business,” I said. Like always, I was waiting to see how it was. “That’s right, John, it ain’t your business,” the devil said. “Nothing I do is any of your business, John, but everything you do is mine.”

Max, you are a melodrama with no audience and a cast of one!

She didn’t look around as I slammed the front door and locked it, just like I promised I’d do—cept I was outside the door, on the porch, when I done it.

I knew this way well. It was the track to the praying ground, where are the colored folks on that part of St. Helena met to have their Christian worship, far from white men and their devilments. What there is bout a colored church service that so riles up the white trash, I didn’t know then and I don’t know now, cept maybe they hate to see us going straight to the true Master, you know, and skipping the middleman.

Mr. Davis was a Senator, you know, before he became a professional Southerner, and a Senator can out-talk any man—can make you think a horse-chestnut is a chestnut horse.

People will say bout anything. That don’t mean I have to believe it. What I see with my own eyes, that I believe.

Stephen knew I first served the Church by stocking reliquaries—transmuting unused bits of rotting paupers into the toes and teeth of saints.

Oh, those sanctified fields and vineyards, always heard of but never seen! Surely there, we thought, the starving could pluck and eat in peace, free of the pious prattle that we choked down with our meals in Rome. In this we were correct. As I rose higher in the church, the meals grew more substantial and the piety less burdensome. I saw the lame and the dying leaping like frogs around a finger bone that had been fondling a milkmaid not two weeks before.

I asked Formosus how his trial was proceeding thus far. Less and less of God, and more and more of man It is of God, as well, I replied. It is mad and pointless, and inefficient. It is godlike.

“I don’t allow officers to mince words with me, Colonel. You must speak freely and frankly.” “General, they are ignoramuses.” “I believe the phrase you were groping for, Colonel, is goddamn worthless ignoramuses, but you’re definitely on the right track.

I went, shouted louder and louder, tried to clear my mind so that, when necessary, I could act without thinking, act like a soldier.

In everyone’s life there are crossroads, moments of decision, however insignificant. To spot the crucial moments in his life, and act, makes a great soldier. To spot the crucial moments on a larger scale, a grand scale—that’s the work of a general.

It’s an insane idea, yes, but hell, this is war. If insanity works, a general is duty-bound to use it.

In the libraries

Open Library Alabama Curiosities · 2005 View library record ↗ Open Library Crossroads · 2004 View library record ↗ Open Library New Magics · 2004 View library record ↗ Open Library The Dragon Book · 2009 View library record ↗ Open Library The Living Dead · 2008 View library record ↗ Open Library Zombies · 2010 View library record ↗

Read Andy Duncan

The Dragon Book 2009 Find a copy New Magics 2004 Find a copy Crossroads 2004 Find a copy Zombies 2010 Find a copy The Living Dead 2008 Find a copy Alabama Curiosities 2005 Find a copy