Quotes from Daniel Woodrell

I don't want to be callous about it, but we all seemed to get over the Oklahoma bombing pretty quickly, and we're never going to get over 9/11.

Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.

The heart's in it then, spinning dreams, and torment is on the way. The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.

You got to be ready to die every day - then you got a chance.

Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go.

Pine trees with low limbs spread over fresh snow made a stronger vault for the spirit than pews and pulpits ever could.

This is how sudden things happened that haunted forever.

Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again.

She would never cry where her tears might be seen and counted against her.

Love and hate hold hands always so it made natural sense that they'd get confused by upset married folk in the wee hours once in a while and a nosebleed or bruised breast might result. But it just seemed proof that a great foulness was afoot in the world when a no-strings roll in the hay with a stranger led to chipped teeth or cigarette burns on the wrist.

Fading light buttered the ridges until shadows licked them clean and they were lost to nightfall.

I said shut up once already, with my mouth.

I think one of our cardinal fuckups is how we insist that even vicious whimsical crazy shit needs to make sense, add up, belong to a reason. We lay this pain on ourselves--there must be a reason behind this horror, there must, but I ain't adequate to findin' it, and that's my fault, so torture me some more.

Nobody here wants to be awful, he said. He hopped a little as he zipped up. It's just nobody here knows all the rules yet, and that makes a rocky time.

The old man had been tanned by the light of too many beer signs, and it just goes to show that you can't live on three packs of Chesterfields and a fifth of bourbon a day without starting to drift far too fuckin' wide in the turns.

I had been born shoved to the margins of the world, sure, but I had volunteered for the pits.

No god craves weaklings.

Gail had a baby named Ned who was four months old, and a new look of baffled hurt, a left-behind sadness, like she saw that the great world kept spinning onward and away while she'd overnight become glued to her spot.

The Dolly's around here can't be seen to coddle a snitch's family --- that's the always been our way. We're old blood, us people, and our ways was set firm long before hot shot baby Jesus ever even burped milk'n sh*& yellow.

This new spot for life might be but a short journey as a winged creature covers it, that is often said, but, oh, Lord, as you know, I had not the wings, and it is a hot, hard ride by road.

When the mushrooms took hold she sensed some of the gods calling to her from inside her own chest and followed their urging outside into the yard and up the sunny slope into the trees. She felt all gooey, gooey with the slobbered love of various gods gathered within, and smiling full-time went about the woods looking to collect butterflies and pet them until they gave milk, or maybe roll in the dirt until she felt China through her skin.

It's not always to the benefit of the story to have it so preordained.

I, myself, often wished to be spared the expectation of better days ahead or such.

That water's colder'n hell! That's what makes it good. That's what makes it help all your bruises'n bumps'n stuff. It's colder'n a goddam witch's tit in there!