Quotes from Chris Offutt

You think if he did, things might change? I don't know, he said. That's the pity of it, Rhonda said. Nobody does.

The woods were thick with shadowed green, and Rhonda wished she were in them, walking animal trails until they faded into the brush and she was lost, could stay lost for good.

They said God always had a plan. Rhonda couldn't see what this plan was other than a punishment.

She loved the babies with every cell of her being but it always felt one-sided. They were too bad off to love her back.

The state man's threat to steal her family enlivened her as if doused by ice water. The leaden fatigue of her despair evaporated. Something inside her unlocked.

Though often surrounded by people, Hattie felt dreadfully alone.

She could put off the inevitable but at a terrible cost.

Between Princeton and Elizabethtown they stopped twice for Tucker to avail himself of gas station facilities, the food having slid through his bowels like Sherman through Georgia.

Rhonda looked like she'd been sent for and couldn't come, got there and wasn't wanted.

I'll teach you how to roll a cigarette while we're waiting. A man's got to learn that or he won't never have no way of knowing how good a store-bought is.

creaked like old bedsprings. Lightning bugs made a trail of yellow specks in the dimming air. He and Boyd used to wait until they blinked, then pull their bodies apart and smear the glowing mush on their faces.

I'll not have that talk at the table. He nodded and sipped coffee. He'd never fully comprehended what was allowed at the table and what was not.

My wife says the good Lord laid out a rough road for all of us, and we just got to take it and keep taking it and it'll get better one of these days. Uh-huh. One of these days ain't coming fast enough.

He left and I wished I could go somewhere and start all over, which is how I've felt all my life. As soon as I get somewhere, I'm ready to leave.

When I couldn't see the land out there, I forgot I wasn't at home. Sometimes I wished it was always night.

He knew he was vulnerable now, cornered with one way out.

Tucker felt gratitude of a previously unknown depth.

Rhonda cried once, but it went on for hours, as if she was shedding every speck of sorrow she'd ever felt.

The winner of a knife fight was the man who bled to death slowest.

He was always on the verge of sleep, a middle area that provided no rest.

The Tuckers were a good bunch with bad luck, same as a lot of hill families. You helped when you could, but he hoped he was clear of the Tuckers for good. Trouble came their way like sideways wind in winter.

He felt bewildered, as if he inhabited someone else's life.

When the blade dulled, he sharpened it on the rock, an experience he admired-the surface that dulled it could refresh it as well.

A thorn ripped a gash that he didn't feel. His body was far away from his mind. He leaned back and stared at a patch of sky through the intertwining limbs. Nothing made sense.