She had been struck by the figure of a woman's back in a mirror. She stopped and looked. The dress the figure wore was the color called ashes of roses, and Ada stood, held in place by a sharp stitch o...
Ruby said there were many songs that you could not say anybody in particular had made by himself. A song went around from fiddler to fiddler and each one added something and took something away so tha...
Most of the travel was purposeless, carried out in exactly the desperate spirit of fleeing from pursuers. It was romantic, in a certain sense. Especially if you’re not the one doing it.
Life can get fucked up fast when you try to be a pleaser. Because people won't ever be pleased, not even if you drop them ass-first into paradise. They like bitching too much.
I’ve had relatives so crooked they nearly went to prison, but if you have money you never actually go. They make you think it for a while, and that’s your punishment.
I'm ruined beyond repair, is what I fear...And if so, in time we'd both be wretched and bitter. I know people can be mended. Not all, and some more immediately than others. But some can be. I don't se...
I do know that however hard you try, you can’t see the inside tangle of somebody else’s love—or whatever uglier word applies—not deep enough to make sense of it.
Going bearded seemed one less thing to have to fail at.
By now he had stared at the window through a late summer so hot and wet that the air both day and night felt like breathing through a dishrag, so damp it caused fresh sheets to sour under him and tiny...
And they did what lovers often do when they think the future stretches out endless before them as bright as on the noon of creation day: they talked ceaselessly of the past, as if each must be caught...
The path to contentment was to abide by one's own nature and follow it's path.
When time is remote enough nobody amounts to much.
To Ada, Ruby’s monologues seemed composed mainly of verbs, all of them tiring. Plow, plant, hoe, cut, can, feed, kill.
That's the way it is at some point in life. An inevitable consequence of living. A lot of things begin falling away.
Taking the life of a nation is a serious task, V says. Few succeed, even if the cause is just. We didn't, and ours wasn't. But sometimes I can't help missing those days when we all just took care of e...
Our minds aren't made to hold on to the particulars of pain the way we do bliss. It's a gift God gives us, a sign of His care for us.
One thing he discovered with a great deal of astonishment was that music held for him more then just pleasure. There was meat to it. The grouping of sounds, their forms in the air as they rang out and...
Monroe had in fact preached that God was not at all such a one as ourselves, not one to be temperamentally inclined to tread ragefully upon us until our blood flew up and stained all His white raiment...
Lola's only nugget of wisdom to her little daughters was Never cry, never ever.
It does your mind good to talk to people different from you.