Quotes from Chris Offutt

The Milky Way made a blizzard of stars in the narrow gap between the hills. A whip-poor-will called, its shrill sound close to the house.

She worried that her best was behind her now.

What kind of job you aiming to get? The kind where a man gets paid what he's owed.

In the way of small-town rebels everywhere, they conformed to each other.

I'm trying to help you. I never asked for help my whole life. I want what I'm owed.

He wondered why a tree grew so close to the same water that would make it fall. Maybe trees were as greedy as people.

He drove out the ridge and off the hill, wondering why he'd waved. It was instinctive, as if something had ended, a farewell to everything that had happened between them for the past sixteen years.

The more she knew, the worse she'd worry.

My car contained guns, bundles of cash I'd found hidden about the house, and boxes of vintage pornography. If I got pulled over and searched, I'd probably go to jail. If I had a wreck, money and porn would litter the interstate, mixed with my funeral suit, my grandfather's rifle, a shotgun, three hundred rounds of ammunition, the remnants of my father's ashes, and whatever was left of me.

It was country dark. He closed his eyes, feeling safe.

Wind in the high boughs brushed leaves like the sound of distant water. As the canopy shifted, light flowed across the forest floor. He'd forgotten the pleasures of being in the woods.

He saw a white figure and wondered if it was a ghost. He'd never seen one before. Depending on who it was, he might not mind too much. Still, it was disconcerting.

I get restless of the night.

I never been one to favor laws.

Vaughn nodded. Lije steaded himself and looked into the woods. Never could abide no roof. Ours ain't the best, Vaughn said. Leaks come spring. Lije pointed at Venus faint above the distant ridge. only roof-hole I ever did crave. Evening star ain't a hole. Then how's that light get through?

See there," he said. "The ants are drawing up and closing their doors. A book ain't the only thing there is to read. We best get going if we're going to.

He demanded to know what I could learn from him, since my subject matter of Kentucky was unfathomably different from his—wealthy people on the East Coast. I became angry. Here was one more older man presenting himself as an obstacle.

I'd never really found a place in the outside world, but had stayed away too long to fit in at home.

Sometimes I don't think I've done anything to leave my mark in this world. I'm the kind of person the world leaves a mark on.

Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. —Flannery O'Connor

There are times in people's lives when a significant event occurs and they're not aware of it—the last time you pick up a son before he's too heavy, the final kiss of a marriage gone bad, the view of a beloved landscape you'll never see again. Weeks later, I realized those were Dad's last words to me.

it occurred to him that time didn't move forward as he'd always thought. People move through time instead.

I don't miss my father, but without his shackles to strain against, the world is terrifying and vast. I have lost a kind of purpose, a reason to prove myself.

Time piles up like brush. You burn it in the fall and all you remember are the glowing cinders. I got ash heaps everywhere I look. -Old of the Moon