Quotes from Kevin Wilson

Was this how trauma worked? she wondered. Those closest to it remained dumbfounded by the fact that those who weren't present could derive meaning from it?

She's got a way of making a man feel guilty for certain things he'd never feel bad about on his own, like watching someone shoot himself in the face.

Atop a Ferris wheel, Orson Welles told Joseph Cotten how Italy's thirty years of war and terror and bloodshed had produced the Renaissance and Michelangelo, and how Switzerland's five hundred years of democracy and peace had produced, goddamn, only the cuckoo clock.

What do you think I'm going to do? she asked him. Whatever it is, he answered, I think you'll be terrified when it happens. Don't let that stop you.

Maybe that's what children were, a desperate need that opened you up even if you didn't want it.

I grew up reading not-serious literature, like comic books and pulp novels, so my instinct is to amuse the reader and entertain.

I don't know if it's good or bad, but when I first started writing I imitated the narrative thrust of a movie. And as I worked, I learned what you can do in fiction that you can't do in movies, and vice-versa.

Short stories, for me, it's like you step inside this brand new car and you drive it and you drive it into a tree and you walk away from it.

Children do have the potential to kill art. But now I think they kill the bad art. At least that is what my son has done for me.

It is strangely wonderful to feel the lack of something instead of believing that it was never there in the first place.

How did people protect themselves? How did anyone keep this world from ruining them?

You know, at Vanderbilt, there was a kind of boy who wore pastel shorts and boat shoes. They wore seersucker, like they were racist lawyers from the forties. I hated them. They seemed like children but they already looked like middle-aged men. I called them Mint Julep Boys, like they missed the Old South because, even if there was horrible racism, it was worth it if it meant that they could be important by default.

His writing had become, like a stash of rare and troubling pornography, something that must be kept hidden, an obsession that other people would be mystified to discover.

I thought it over. Dollywood. "Islands in the Stream." That body. She was the best thing that had ever come out of Tennessee. Jesus Christ, it wasn't even close. Bessie had got it on the first try

And then I got older, and, guess what? I still never felt right inside my body. I don't think I ever will. I was kind of flamed out everywhere I went, always got a little less than what I thought I'd get. But I guess that's okay. I think maybe it's necessary to feel like you're not quite settled, or maybe for some people it's necessary.

When she called her brother, Buster said that she should climb out the window of the bathroom and run away, which was his solution to most problems.

I knew that if I asked, a hairbrush would appear, a toothbrush and four different kinds of toothpaste, but I tried to pretend I was self-sufficient. A lot of times when I think I'm being self-sufficient, I'm really just learning to live without the things that I need.

Who would judge you?" she asked. "Who do you know who's done a good job? Name one parent that you think made it through without fucking their kid up in some specific way.

And when you are weird, when your surroundings become quiet, you think maybe you aren't quite so fucked up. You think, Why was it so hard before?

If you were rich, and you were a dude, it really felt like if you just followed a certain number of steps, you could do pretty much whatever you wanted.

The toxicity of love coupled with pain can erode even the strongest heart.

To be a teenager, it takes very little to think that someone else might actually know who you are, even as you spend all your time thinking that no one understands you. It's such a lovely feeling.

This is weird, Madison. You want me to raise your husbands fire children.

We are so happy to have you here," he said; he didn't blink. I didn't know if this was something necessary for a politician, if blinking was a sign of weakness or something. As a result, I began blinking so much that I almost started crying.