Quotes from Percival Everett

It's okay to love something bigger than yourself without fearing it. Anything worth loving is bigger than we are anyway.

There might not have been the heaven that so many fools advertised, but there certainly was a hell, and it smelled like blood and cold cereal and the family dog.

Perhaps to protect me from the bright light of God. If there was a God, he or she was no good at its job. Apparently there was just too much to do, listening to the prayers of all those who actually mattered, the faithful, the pious, the deluded, the stupid.

Of all possible worlds this was the one in which I had landed.

It was so much like falling.

In case you forgot, my name is Zach Wells. It would not be so strange or awfully bad if you had forgotten.

Perhaps nothing had happened. Perhaps everything had happened.

Very tall with red hair and freckles. Clear marks of a hooligan.

I lay awake for the balance of the night letting my dream shatter into indecipherable pieces the way dreams do.

At eighteen I realized I was eighteen and not so smart, or special and that might have been the only way that I was in fact special. I found my ideas poorly formed and repugnant, my self awkward, and, more or less, for lack of a better word, geeky. In fact my brother, second year medical student that he was, revisited his childhood and, when he passed in the hallway, muttered, "Geek." "It's not my fault," I said.

What's your dog's name?" "Oh, he ain't got no name." "Why's that?" "I don't like names," the man said, looking down at his pet. "How do you call it?" Jim asked. "Call it?

War is hell," she said. "Do you know why I always beat you, Daddy?" "Tell me." "Because you hate to lose pieces.

Basil was happy to have me home. He considered the manner in which I ignored him a kind of attention. He and I were not so different.

Why should I remain in college?" "You've got me," he said without a pause. "That's the best you can do?" I said. "How much money do you have?" "More than I know what to do with," I said, honestly. Everett sighed. I could hear him lighting his cigar. "I suppose you could remain in school for the sex. I here there's a lot of it. Or not." "What about an education?" "Hell, you can read. You know where the library is.

It was the one place that I knew more about than anyone else. I wondered if everyone needed such a place, if everyone could have such a place, if my daughter would ever have such a place.

The sky was black, deep, infinite, the very thing that scared the Greeks and all the other ancients.

Ted looked at Everett's face. "Percival Everett. Didn't you write a book called Erasure ?" Everett nodded. "I didn't like it," Ted said. "Nor I," Everett said. "I didn't like writing it, and I didn't like it when I was done with it." "Well, actually, I loved the novel in the novel. I thought that story was real gripping. You know, true to life." "I've heard that.

At the time of this writing, I do not know whether I will live much longer, and you don't know what I'm talking about.

As I fell asleep, I knew I would dream, and I dreamed first that I knew why I dreamed, why humans dream. We dream, quite simply, so we know we're not dead.

She laughed and asked, "What if Shakespeare was just hitting keys?" "Shakespeare didn't have a typewriter," I said. "What if he was just making marks on paper? And that's how he came up with Macbeth?" "I doubt it. Maybe Measure for Measure. I could see that with Measure for Measure. Not Macbeth.

Did state troopers shift their pistols from hip to hip to avoid becoming lopsided?

I was just lucky enough to find a truck with the black-power flag already on it.

She could have some crazy ass husband or boyfriend. You know, a stupid redneck with a gun. -That's redundant.

Look away, look away, look away …