Deliverance Quotes
"The whole land was very tense until we put our four steins on its corners and laid the river out to run for us."
"I watched the hand rather than the location, for it seemed to have power over the terrain."
"We really ought to go up there before the real estate people get hold of it and make it over into one of their heavens."
"It’s the old idea that you’re going to get yourself in shape, one of these days."
"Lewis was the only man I knew who could do with his life exactly what he wanted to."
"The trouble is that you not only don’t know anything about it, you don’t want to know anything about it."
"The human body is the same as it always was. It still feels that old fear, and that old pain."
"I am becoming myself, as inconsequential as that may be."
"I am not something somebody shoved off on me. I am what I choose to be, and I am it."
"Sliding is living by antifriction. It is finding a modest thing you can do, and then greasing that thing."
"Life is so fucked-up now, and so complicated, that I wouldn’t mind if it came down, right quick, to the bare survival of who was ready to survive."
"I have no worries. I am becoming myself, as inconsequential as that may be."
"Lewis nodded. 'This land has been sawmilled, all right,' he said."
"Lewis held up a finger next to his ear. 'Listen,' he said."
"I was light green, a tall forest man, an explorer, guerrilla, hunter."
"I felt the complicated urgency of the current, like a thing made of many threads being pulled."
"The sensation of pure riding could not have been greater though we were doing not much more than drifting."
"The river was very cold; it felt as though it had snow and ice in it, and had only just turned then to water."
"Fear and excitement and the prospect of eating all became forms of each other in my mind."
"There was a kind of comfort in knowing that we were where no one could find us, that night was around us and there was nothing we could do about it."
"I remembered to be frightened and right away I was."
"The river pulled us steadily toward a silver highway bridge."
"The sky was beginning to smoke up with night."
"The current entered my muscles and body as though I were carrying it; it came up through the paddle."
"In the dark light the broken plastic pitchers shot out their rays like batteries."
"I dozed for a minute and tried to see what the tent must look like from the outside, with the big night bird sitting in its own silence and equilibrium, holding us fast inside what it took to be our sleep."
"Every now and then I looked into the canoe and saw the body riding there, slumped back with its hand over its face and its feet crossed."
"I had the feeling that such things happened all the time to branches in woods that were deep enough."
"When I quit hearing the creek I knew I was lost, wandering foolishly in the woods holding a corpse by the sleeve."
"Lewis put the gun in and pulled back his hands to his knees, looking."
"It was good to hear a voice, especially his."
"I don’t believe I could have brought myself to take hold of it in any other way."
"We stood on our knees. We leaned forward, panting, our hands on the fronts of our thighs or on the ground."
"The sun fell behind the right side of the gorge, and the shadow of the bank crossed the water so fast that it was like a quick step from one side to the other."
"I wondered how the blood would clot, with so much of the wound open."
"Once I had to go back and try to pick up the trail again."
"I felt I could hold myself together for a while."
"I went to all fours with my head down like a dog."
"The main trouble was that I could not think clearly."
"A badly hurt man is not going to want to fight through bushes."
"I raised my eyes along the ground over the rocks and leaves."
"I put my hands over my face and went wild with terror."
"I began to sing. It was a current popular favorite, a folk-rock tune."
"I went back to the man on the ground, flopped on his side with one leg drawn up."
"I put my thumb and forefinger in my mouth and whistled as loud as I could."
"I reached into one pocket and turned it inside out."
"The wound in the man’s throat was not painful-looking."
"I listened for my cry hanging in the wet air."
"I saw myself there, a tiny figure bent over him, growing."
"I lay forward in the current, thinking vaguely of how to swim."
"I looked at the dead man. You’re dead, Lewis, I said to him."
"My heart moved into my bad side and beat there."
"I had trouble undoing my hands; they still wanted to be holding a rope desperately."
"I had been weakened more than I had thought."
"I lay and moved with the river, with all nightmares and night sweats to come."
"I was coming slowly up against an absolute limit."
"The canoe just followed the channel of its own accord."
"Every time they rose it was not quite as high."
"I came awake fairly fast, because the midmorning sun was beginning to sting my eyelids."
"I looked out the window at the closing green of the day."
"I was half-new anyway, and half-new was very good."
"I was looking forward to the encounter with the local sheriff."
"I watched each of the men in waders do what he was doing at the moment."
"The sun came up more, and I pushed back the covers and lay in it."
"I nearly went to sleep there, but woke up as the water gradually turned cold."
"The road got worse and worse the nearer we got."
"He was an old seam-faced light-bodied man with hazel eyes."
"We were the lead car. We took off through some glaring cornfields."
"I knew that the picture had been taken during the last part of the time we had been talking."
"I shook my head as though I couldn’t believe such stupidity."
"I slept again, as in a place beyond all sleep, around on the other side of death."
"I did and said, 'OK. Let us know if you find anything.'"
"I dressed and went to Bobby’s room and woke him."
"‘Jesus, no,’ he said. ‘Leave it. I never want to see it or touch it or smell it again.’"
"We live on a dead-end street, so that any car that comes down it either belongs to the people who live on the street or has some business with them."
"You damned fucking ape," he said. "Who on earth was your father, boy?"
"Back at home I put an easy chair in front of the picture window and got a blanket and a pillow and sat looking out onto the street with the phone beside me all afternoon."
"No, I’m not; that’s the damned silliest idea I ever heard. You’re going to bed."
"The main thing was to get back into my life as quickly and as deeply as I could; as if I had never left it."
"And so it ended, except in my mind, which changed the events more deeply into what they were, into what they meant to me alone."
"The river underlies, in one way or another, everything I do."