Hell Of A Book Quotes
"He needed to stop this trick he was playing on them...but how?"
"In that moment, invisible and buried in his parents’ love, he was happier than he had ever been."
"I’m not going to hassle you...It really is an honor to meet you."
"Drunk’s a moving target...Just a state of being, like water, or steam, or financial solvency."
"Maybe time is just how we measure meaning. Maybe time is how we best measure love."
"Because I know my own. I’m from North Cakalak."
"You’re not real to matter. I mean, it helps, but it’s not a requirement."
"Don’t worry about what Darryl at school said...The only thing that matters is that you learn to do it."
"Reality as a whole—past or present—just isn’t a good place to hang out, in my opinion."
"It’s okay. I decide if I really believe what you’re saying or not. My mama taught me that. She said I can always pick what is true about the world."
"The Fear. That’s the thing that was really dangerous. It had a fist in my stomach and wasn’t about to let go."
"Fear of being a bad father. Fear of being a bad husband. Fear of being arrested."
"The characters in those noir pictures were never afraid of anybody. Not really."
"A perfect story. True as can be, even if it ain’t real."
"Writing chooses us. All we can do is heed the call."
"The only flaw I’ve ever found with writing is that you can call out to it, but the page never answers you back."
"Every day he wore his fears just like he wore those Dickies of his."
"Anyhow, Kellie and I are driving along on this beautiful spring day and we’re smiling and talking to one another, because that’s what people do."
"The cars behind me in traffic don’t honk their horns because this isn’t the type of town where people do that type of thing."
"The whole world of my life spins under a radiant marquee of fear."
"The law was always going to fail them, just as it had failed their parents, and their grandparents, and their great-grandparents, and on and on."
"Being Unseen was saving his life by taking parts of it away."
"The whole town turned out to solve the tragedy of William’s death."
"Dead kids don’t linger on the brain like they used to."
"But there’s a catch to convincing yourself that you don’t know a thing: yeah, it keeps your life on track, but for the thing or person you’re choosing not to see or know, you’re taking away their whole entirety."
"And ain’t that something to do to a person? To a group of people? Ain’t willful ignorance a hell of a thing?"
"I can’t figure it out. I can only ever get pieces of it. And even those pieces are stuck inside of me. I can’t get them out."
""We have tonight among us a special guest, as many of you know." And then there is more mumbling and there are eyes turned in my direction and I imagine this must be how The Kid felt walking through school with everyone looking at him and casting all sorts of judgments his way."
""We’re tired," someone shouts. "And we should be," the minister confirms."
""I’m not a bad person," he says. "That’s the thing that hurts the most. People think I’m evil."
"To be these people is to be without a homeland, a lost tribe, a people whose only connection is each other and even that comes and goes."
""Don’t you know who I am?" the man asks, and I can tell from his tone and from the expression on his face that he can’t decide if he should be happy or afraid that I don’t know who he is."
""I mean, it was my finger that pulled the trigger, but it wasn’t me. I’m not the kind of person to kill somebody."
""Just look at you," he continues, "a goddamn fancy-ass writer. Been on TV. Sold more books than God only knows. And you did it all being Black."
"It takes the misfortune of others to remind us of our own blessings."
"He sees things. Lots of different things. But, mostly, he sees his father."
"All you have to do is trust the medicine. Trust that it will work."
"It’s only a fall if you think about the ending. Otherwise, it’s called flying."
"Love cures all. Loves takes away pain. Love makes us forget, and each of us is deserving of a little forgetting."
"I know," Soot said. And he laughed and waved at his father and said, softly, "I miss you."
"I’m sorry," The Kid says. "For what happened to your mama."
"My responsibility is to sell books. My responsibility is to keep myself out of the poorhouse."
"Never can tell, Kid. But we’re gonna damn sure take a shot at it."