The dude don’t see himself as a bad man. Way he sees it, he’s an angel for hire. He can gather in lost lambs from the four corners and kiss away their tears, or he can shake a flaming sword. Up to his employers. Saint Michael don’t question why when the Big Dog says git. Ole Mike, he just ties up his war-bag, thumps his golden road, eats his beans out of the tin, and when he sees his mark, he gets to it no fuss. That’s the dude in a nut.

Catherynne M Valente, Six-Gun Snow White [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]

Hermetic quote Valente Six-Gun Snow White dude bad man angel for hire-

Consider also:

  1. “Jesse had nothing to reveal, no secrets to tell. He would never break, as other people break, and cry out by their openness the intimacy of love.”
  2. “How do you get ready to face off with the thing you’re going to share your soul with?”
  3. “If ‘the world of imagination’ was ‘the world of eternity,’ as this doctrine implied, it was of less importance to know men and nature than to distinguish the beings and substances of imagination from those of a more perishable kind, created by the phantasy, in uninspired moments, out of memory and whim”
  4. “Where am I? Seven days my spirit fell, Down, down the whirlpools and the gulfs of hell: Seven days a corpse lay desolate–at last Back drew the spirit and the soul aghast To animate that clay–O horrible! The resurrection pang is hardly past. Yet in awhile I stumbled to my feet To flee–no nightmare could be worse to meet. And, spite of that, I knew some deadlier trap Some worm more poisonous would set–mayhap!”
  5. The Book of the New Sun