Reading wasn't an attempt to educate myself. It was my chief escape from a world that, although gorgeous in landscape and rich with mountain culture, didn't provide what I needed—the promise of advent...
I don’t miss my father, but without his shackles to strain against, the world is terrifying and vast. I have lost a kind of purpose, a reason to prove myself.
The tree line was gone and hilltops blended with the black tapestry of night. It was country dark. He closed his eyes, feeling safe.
He left and I wished I could go somewhere and start all over, which is how I've felt all my life. As soon as I get somewhere, I'm ready to leave.
He wondered why a tree grew so close to the same water that would make it fall. Maybe trees were as greedy as people.
It occurred to him that time didn't move forward as he'd always thought. People move through time instead.
When I couldn't see the land out there, I forgot I wasn't at home. Sometimes I wished it was always night.
The state called it recidivism, but as the old cons said, Baker was doing life on the installment plan.
Vaughn nodded. Lije steaded himself and looked into the woods. Never could abide no roof.Ours ain't the best, Vaughn said. Leaks come spring.Lije pointed at Venus faint above the distant ridge. only r...
Time piles up like brush. You burn it in the fall and all you remember are the glowing cinders. I got ash heaps everywhere I look. -Old of the Moon
It was country dark. He closed his eyes, feeling safe.
If you've used adverbs, look at them carefully. Adverbs are the weakest words; verbs are the strongest. Many, many times I've found that I have the wrong verb so I'm attempting to cheat and modify the...
Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. —Flannery O’Connor,
Sometimes I don't think I've done anything to leave my mark in this world. I'm the kind of person the world leaves a mark on.
Most grandiose gestures are suspect—the couple who renew their vows just before divorce or the politician who publicly swears he’s clean, then enters rehab. Building
I’d forced myself to interact with so much pornography, I no longer regarded my wife in a sexual manner. Each time I tried, my mind filled with images of fetish porn. I could admire her dress, legs an...
He demanded to know what I could learn from him, since my subject matter of Kentucky was unfathomably different from his—wealthy people on the East Coast. I became angry. Here was one more older man p...
Books offered the promise of a world in which misfits like me could flourish. Within
I'd never really found a place in the outside world, but had stayed away too long to fit in at home.
At the time I wasn’t even sure what she meant—what does anyone do? We mark time until we die. She was still waiting for an answer. My roommate filled the silence. He’s a writer, he said. Oh, she said....