Quotes from Robert Olen Butler

I half imagined a God who would look on such creatures and pity them and love them and try very hard to show Himself in those moments when the two people, whoever they were, were letting go of their own selfishness and fear and faithlessness and trying to find a way to cling hard and long and permanently to each other. And if they failed at that, God would see just the yearning for it as worthy of a gift of all the grace a God could give.

And my eyes fill up with tears because this man's very fingertips are in love with me.

a face more suited for making book than selling books.

vanilla and turf smells of old books.

The little things gather for a long time, but one morning you look in the mirror and you understand them in a flash.

I'd been lucky never to have my nose rearranged. It was still on the straight and narrow

The different pamphlets that lined the coffee table all had clouds on their covers. I shuffled them, then shuffled them again, but the weather wouldn't change.

The man placed my mother on the counter. I'd selected an urn that could easily be confused for a Chinese vase, but I no longer appreciated that. When I saw it now I thought, This thing is so ugly, and if I screw off the top I will hear my mother scream.

But at least I am in a place larger than a teacup. I once dwelt in a cup of tea, and on that occasion, I sensed the constraints of the space.

The man gave me a stack of papers and said that one of the most painful things about death was the paperwork. I

the minarets now seemed to me as profuse in Istanbul as smokestacks in Pittsburgh.

Alcoholics bleed a lot. Because they hit their heads a lot.

IV is the quickest hangover cure on the planet. Trust me. If you ever feel like you're dying from a hangover, contact a nurse you know. A medic. An EMT. Anyone who can hook you up with some intravenous cleansing. You feel like a new man. A new man ready to haul around drunks all night.

they were Muslims who had a long history not unlike Christian history—namely, marching into countries where a bunch of folks thought differently than you about life and God and you ground your righteous heel into their throats. I was an infidel. But not inside here. In this house—and on the most threadbare couch in the most desolate, rubble-strewn vacant lot—coffee and tobacco were the common sacraments of the whole human race.

Captain Turner, from my two encounters with him and from this present sailing strategy, seemed to me a classic example of military hierarchy: a guy who was mediocre and competent at some lower level but who had inevitably been promoted to a rank and responsibility where he was finally stupid and incompetent.

The Hòa Hào believes that the maintenance of our spirits is very simple, and the mystery of joy is simple, too. The four characters mean "A good scent from a strange mountain.

I haven't turned into Richard Harding Davis.

She bowed. A long, slow, stiff bow from the waist. The bow of a Prussian officer in a social setting with civilians, feeling uncomfortable, waiting to leave.

Brilliantine-assaulted hair