Quotes from Daniel Woodrell

As the ample Hedda, who disguised her ampleness behind a billow of yellow summer dress, told it, her life up 'til she hoisted this very bloody mary in her hand was a convoluted tale of bubbly love gone flat, fine talents unnoticed and similarly woeful bullshit.

Tip began to nod, then shook his head. "I could be eight kinds of crooked, there, piglet, but I ain't never been no kind of dumb.

Violence had lost the personal touch, the pride had gone out of self-preservation, and mere chickenshit possibilities of improved technology replaced it.

Ledoux's face was pebbled with mosquito bites. Forget the Cutter's and that means every needle-nose bug in the woods spare-changing you for blood like cornerboy hustlers spotting a strung-out Kennedy trying to score on Seventh. Like you got plenty to give.

Then she moved backwards, deeper into the shadow. All I could see was that she was barely there, like something you almost recall: the Pledge of Allegiance, your daddy's real name.

Mike Rondeau, a tall drink of a man sloshed into a squat glass, with a belt that could double as a lasso and a volume of ambitious lies that he called his life, came in the door and laughed.

She dressed to cast her daughter in a frumpy light.

On his next return to this world, Duncan Cobb, oldest son, faithless cousin, cautious lover, and pal of killers, awoke infused with the lucidity born of no escape, and a mortal dose of honesty.

Blanchette stared toward the room in which Rankin's future had been diverted. Yes, he could've made it, all right, Blanchette thought. Not with his next breath or two, but by the time he was fifty, fifty-five. It was up to someone else now. The end of his cigar had a thumb of ash on it, so Blanchette flicked it on the rug, then rubbed it in with his foot. He looked

I said, "There's ditches his size, too.

Manners won't cost you a thing," Asa said. "But they may gain you plenty.

I am still, relentlessly, reading Agee, and Flannery, too. Two of the writers who fired me to write post–Marine Corps, when I needed it, were Mr. McGuane and Mr. Harrison, and their books are always nearby, well thumbed. And Kawabata and James Salter, both of whom floor me.

I was borrowing confidence on credit from faith.

To cover the houses and the stones with green—so the sky would make sense—you have to push down black roots into the dark. —CESARE PAVESE

The furniture came into the house when Mamaw and Granddad Bromont were alive, had been in use since Mom was a child, and the lumpy stuffing and worn fabric yet held the scent of Granddad's pipe tobacco and ten thousand dusty days.

On this day I saw a three-legged buck, with battered antlers and worn fur, drag off through the woods. The proud stag lived on but, crippled up and worn, he would soon feed other beasts.

This must always be admitted of us—for desperate dash and cruelty we were unbettered men.

While Dad was in prison the rule had been to never see the same stud three nights. One night is forgot like a fart, two like a pang, but after three nights lain together there is a hurt, and to soothe the hurt there will be night four, and five, and nights unnumbered. The heart's in it then, spinning dreams, and torment is on the way. The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.

Dumb and bold things are best accomplished drunk, we figured, so we went deep into the popskull.

The universe sometimes makes war seem a mere chigger in comparison, but that is in no way soothing to one who has the itch.

If all meals were pecan pie, you'd yearn for a cold potato.

Jessup'n me run across each other by total accident out at the trout place by Rockbridge, and he got me to laughin' so happy things rekindled for a day or two, then he was gone again.

The reverend sacked out on the floor where Holt and me had been sleeping. The man had several pistols on him, as he was aware that the Lord works in mysterious ways and some of them require the blasting of others.

Don't fight if you can help it. But if one of you gets whipped by somebody both of you best come home bloody, understand?