Quotes from Ron Hansen

A man of principles," Jesse said. "People say that about themselves when really they only want to make you unhappy.

No one talked as Jesse moved - it was as if his acts were miracles of invention wonderous to behold.

Bob was not yet twenty, after all, while Jesse was thirty-four and in physical decline; each calendar week subtracted from Jesse the powers that Bob accrued.

Jesse rounded forward under the towel and cozied his feet in the bath water. It was as if no one else were around and Jesse was once again alone and at ease with his meditations. He said, "I can't figure it out: do you want to be like me, or do you want to be me?

Bob slid his chair back and moved the coal-oil lamp from the kitchen to the sitting room. He said, "Oftentimes things seem impossible up until they're attempted." Then he lidded the chimney glass with his palm and suffocated the light.

Then the night lessened, the clouds ashened slightly, and the men became starkly black and brown against the gray of the snow.

He was increasingly irritable and suspicious, and a cantankerous mood could fly over him as quickly as the shadow of a bird. But Jesse was neither close-mouthed nor sulky for long, and over the weeks that he and Charley were on the road, he unscrolled yarns and anecdotes that excited interest in Charley only insofar as they permitted him a corresponding reminiscence.

Charley's consumption and indigestion had only become more lacerating; his eye sockets were as deep and dark as fistholes in the snow, his gums were strangely purple, he wore extravagant gold rings on every finger and a clove of garlic around his neck according to the guidance of a gypsy named Madame Africa. Bob was skinny, sallow, peevish, his complexion spoiled with so many pimples that some correspondents thought it was measles.

Are you even aware of hot hot and cold you are? How you seduce and then withdraw, tantalize and then retreat? Even with men you're like that. You're a mystery to people, you keep us off-balance and guessing. We have to presume what you're thinking or feeling. And instead of being frustrated we find ourselves fascinated, and we make things up about you out of our own hopes and needs and all the dangerous things we're afraid to do.

Size me up and get goosebumps, boys. I'm the widowmaker and the slayer of jungles, the mean-eyed harbinger of desolation! I've ripped a catamount asunder and sprinkled his fragments in my stew; one screech from me makes vultures fly, one glance puts blisters on grizzly bears, devastation rides on my every breath! Where is that stately stag to stamp his hoof or rap his antlers to these proclamations! Where is the mangy lion what will lick the salt off my name!

A human judge who viewed his soul would have condemned him, he thought; exacted some penalty; spurned him. But he felt in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament a tranquil, soothing God of intimacy & tolerance & unquenchable love, who knew to each jot & tittle everything about him but chose to focus on what was good, even childhood kindnesses that he'd forgotten.

Jesse said, "You know what we are, Tim? We're nighthawks. We're the ones who go out at night and guard everything so people can sleep in peace. We've got our eyes peeled; no one's going to slip anything past us.

Inside, cooking smells maneuvered through the house: cow liver, sweet potatoes, stewed onions, cabbage - scents that were as assertive as colors.

I have no roots anywhere else. I have no 'at home' but here. And I feel doomed. Like I'm riding to Hell on a fast horse. I'm not afraid of dying, but I don't want to die alone. I don't want some no one finding me finished off and asking a sheriff, 'Who's that ?