Suttree Quotes
"He went solitary and starlit through the sleepfast countryside."
"To steal upon them where they lay, his hand on their warm ripe shapes."
"The road that led to sleep and sloth and careless nights."
"The world seemed a swamp of sorrow, a wilderness of ruin."
"Every man's memory is his private literature."
"Despair is the constant companion of the clown."
"Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul."
"See the hand that nursed the serpent. The fine hasped pipes of her fingerbones. The skin bewenned and speckled."
"Here is the anguish of mortality. Hopes wrecked, love sundered."
"How everything that I was warned of's come to pass."
"The loneliness of the city in the heat of the summer air."
"He was released a few days later on order from Judge Kelly."
"The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe."
"With the day's sun full on the tin roof, the heat in the houseboat was unendurable."
"He leaned on his elbows and looked out over the river."
"The drone of machinery, the lonely industry of the city."
"Suttree took the rope loose from the rail and began to haul the skiff along the side of the houseboat."
"Market Street on Monday morning, Knoxville, Tennessee. In this year nineteen fifty-one."
"He crossed the street, stepping gutters clogged with greenstuff."
"In these serried clefts stone armatures on which once hung the flesh of living fish."
"Dusk deepened. Swifts vanished back over the pewter face of the river."
"The world has given its hymn to love, and love has given its hymn to the world."
"The path switchbacked and ran out on a cutbank above an abandoned railsiding. He descended into the roadbed and went on. The old right of way lay dim among the weeds, the rails rusted, curving away over rotted ties and dark slag."
"He greeted them with a smile, a curiously attired person emerging from the shrubbery."
"I got to get on. He was going along sideways over the ties."
"A bird flew. He came down the iron steps to the ground."
"The air was rich with humus and he could smell the flowers."
"A sort of slug. He picked it up. A human eye looked up at him from between his thumb and forefinger."
"He opened one eye. Boy, he said, what's wrong with you?"
"He dusted it on his sleeve and carried it with him."
"The sun like a bunghole to a greater hell beyond."
"A vision of bleak pastoral that at length turned him back toward the city again."
"Small beast so occupied with the bad news in his belly."
"They watched their corks tilt below them in the creek mouth and did not turn to see him teeter past along the rail."
"A lank black slattern stood hipshot in a doorframe."
"He made his way by alleys and small dark streets to the lights at Henley Street."
"Veering and rending the placid life that homed to ash in the columnar light."
"He had a few things he'd collected in his pocket and he took these out and set them alongside in the edging of mulch and lay back again in the grass."
"Wherever you come from or was goin to one and leave me the son of a bitching hell alone?"
"A few vendors squatted yet in their stalls, old women with tawed faces and farmers with their quilted napes."
"He rose and nudged the rat with his toe and then went on down the alley."
"Him wide-eyed in his jury-rigged apparel not unlike some small apostate to the race itself."
"He went into the Gold Sun and ordered coffee and doughnuts, sitting at the counter among the morning smells of fried sausage and eggs."
"Suttree sat in the hot little room with the tombstone tables and sipped his beer."
"The wrinkled empty skin hung from the neck like a torn sock."
"Redwings rose from a bower in the sedge with thin cries."
"The path he followed wound along the hills through grass and bramble and cut cross-country toward the lower reaches of the river."
"He crossed through the high grass and went up the slope, climbing with handholds in the new turf until he gained the crest and turned to look down on the river and the city beyond."
"Bird shadows scuttled past but did not move them."
"Suttree leaned against the face of crumbling stone and watched them."
"He was watching the girl clamber out of the river."
"This old man looked past the first one's shoulder toward Suttree."
"The old man glanced again at Suttree. Suttree looked about, then leaned to his ear."
"You come tonight, he said. I hear tell they might be going to have May Maude. That does the old-timey note singing."
"Suttree rose and dusted the grass from his trousers."
"You better get in that river is where you better get to, said the one in overalls."
"He went up the river path, swinging along in the sunshine."
"In the trees, small victims struggle, toad or shrewlet among the thorns where they have been impaled."
"Gods and fathers what has happened here, good friends where is there clemency?"
"He himself used to wake in terror to find whole congregations of the uninvited attending his bed."
"In the cold autumn dawn that crept the fields he woke and watched the passing countryside through the glass."
"Remorse lodged in his gorge like a great salt cinder."
"Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it."
"How surely are the dead beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them."
"The lichens on the crumbling stones like a strange green light."
"The dread in his heart was a thing he'd not felt since he feared his father in the aftermath of some child's transgression."
"You're funny, you squirrely son of a bitch. Do you think the world will end just because you're cold?"
"A world this winter afternoon where all things bear that grainy look of old films and the buildings rise into an obscurity prophetic and profound."
"Lights came on above the shops, a neon sign here, sudden paltry spanglements against the bluegray dusk."
"The pale domes of light in the clerestory waxed more yellow."
"With the heel of his hand Suttree cleared a small window in the frosted glass and peered out at the few figures receding along the walks."
"A passing rack of hot neon washed his own sad countenance from the glass."
"Bell ching. This archaic craft grinding to a halt."
"People shuffling out through the folding door."
"Your face among the brown bags old lady. Waiting to cross."
"End of the line, buddy, the driver called back."
"This would be a pleasant world if everybody could just ride and ride."
"A few carlights came owllike from the murk and receded."
"He stood beneath a streetlamp with his thumb out."
"Suttree with his miles to go kept his eyes to the ground, maudlin and muttersome in the bitter chill, under the lonely lamplight."
"You caint get in that way, idjit, the old man called."
"The fight washed up against the ladies' room wall and the structure groaned and slewed."
"Someone going with him saw him see. That's fucking awful, he said."
"He distinctly heard his mother say his name."
"What man is such a coward he would not rather fall once than remain forever tottering?"
"The night is cold and colder, a fog moves with menace in the streets."
"Out there in the winter streets a few ashen anthroparians scuttling yet through the falling soot."
"Uneasy sleeper you will live to see the city of your birth pulled down to the last stone."
"Friends row by row watched his passing and waved at him with their fingers and whispered among themselves."
"When I was young I didnt care for nothin, he continued."
"Scarlet trumpets of cowitch overhung the little house and wildflowers bloomed up through the twisted shapes of steel by whatever miracle renders grease and cinders arable and the junkman's lot was a garden more lovely for the phantasm from which it sprang."
"Everything lay quiet and sundabbled in this quaint garden by the river."
"He rapped at the open door. The cane at the corner of the shack rattled gently in the wind."
"Shit a brick, said Harrogate with cautious enthusiasm."
"He spent the night under the boat, it upturned like a canoe and propped with sticks, a small fire before him."
"Beyond the bridge's arching brow drifting fireflies guttered against the night and the wind bore a heady scent of honeysuckle."
"He tried to nap but lying there in the heat beneath the viaduct with the traffic overhead he had such fantasies of plenitude that his feet made little involuntary trotting motions."
"It was a grayhaired and avuncular apothecary who leaned not unkindly down from his high pulpit."
"A slender rod came sucking out of a little piston."
"An eerie rattling apparition stroking through the fog."