A Land More Kind Than Home Quotes
"I sat there in the car with the gravel dust blowing across the parking lot and saw the place for what it was."
"A screen door slamming shut, oil lamps lit and sputtering black smoke, dusty horses hitched to the posts."
"All the way back before him and the deacons had wheeled out the broken coolers, filled the linoleum with rows of folding chairs."
"But the truth was that half the people in the congregation left when Pastor Matthews died and there wasn’t enough money coming in."
"I’d seen people I’d known just about my whole life pick up snakes and drink poison, hold fire up to their faces."
"Here I am, Lord. Come and take me if you get a mind to it. I’m ready if you are."
"That’s why the snake bites bothered me the most. Those copperheads and rattlers could only stand so much."
"I don’t think a single one of us knew for sure where he came from."
"The world ain’t made up of God’s people. The world ain’t given to know what we know."
"We know God has a plan for his people. We know God lets only the righteous into Heaven."
"But for ten years I kept those children out, kept them safe."
"It was the only time in my life I’d ever gone to church out of fear."
"I stood there listening to his footsteps as he walked down the center aisle toward the door."
"And here you are. I’m glad you came. It’s good to have you inside our church again."
"A church ain’t no place to hide the truth, and a church that does ain’t no place for me."
"The good Lord can heal with one hand and harm with the other. That’s the power of an awesome God."
"I felt like I was inside there, standing right down front on the little stage and looking into the people’s faces."
"They weren’t, Joe Bill said. I think they were trying to help him."
"I knew he was probably looking out at the river behind me, but I felt like he was staring me right in the eyes."
"If I call Joe Bill’s mama and ask her to talk to him about it, you think he’s going to tell her the same story?"
"I wanted to tell him, 'Wake up, Stump,' but I didn’t say nothing because I was afraid to see that he wouldn’t hear me."
"It’s always an emergency, especially with him."
"Quit messing with that splinter. You’re just going to work it down in there deeper."
"Places like those might as well be a world away."
"But it wasn’t nobody else but her and there wasn’t nobody else there but me, so I figured there wasn’t much use in all that carrying on."
"Girls your age been give away by now and laid up with a baby or two and a piece of land all theirs."
"I knew that what I’d wanted to say to my great-aunt I’d already said to myself, and if she was listening up there she’d have heard it just the same."
"I reckon that’s been along about sixty-odd years."
"The past will just weigh on you if you spend too much time remembering it."
"It’s like putting on a pair of heavy waders and stepping out to midriver where the fishing’s best."
"I watched him walk back toward the barn. The woman was staring at me from the field. I raised my hand to her."
"I didn’t know just where I was at first, but the sun had sunk down below the hill that I was walking toward, and the whole country out there was just as quiet as it could be."
"I reckon it makes pretty good sense that they’d stay as far away from us as they could."
"It takes a lifetime to build equity in loss."
"Real loss isn’t something you feel after watching a child once a week."
"It's up to you now. Ain't going to be nobody up here but y'all, and you need to start thinking about what's best for your family."
"Children are the lifeblood of this church. There ain’t no future without them."
"People get ideas, and they’re likely to place blame whether it’s deserving or not."
"I can’t have him coming around here. Not after what’s happened."
"You got yourself a content little boy. I wouldn’t get to complaining about him being too quiet just yet."
"It doesn’t matter how bad you want them to change. Sometimes it don’t even matter how bad they want to change themselves."
"It’s a good thing to see that people can heal after they’ve been broken, that they can change and become something different from what they were before."
"Churches are like that. The living church is made of people, and it can grow sick and break just like people can, and sometimes churches can die just like people die."
"But I can tell you that it came back to life once he was gone. A church can be healed, and it can be saved like people can be saved."
"It started on the Sunday somebody got to the church early and tore that old newspaper off the windows."
"It was the same world that we’d left behind, and it was a good thing to see it again."
"It’s enough for me to know that he’s out there if Jess needs him. I think it’s enough for Jess too."
"These two men who’d hated each other for so long stood there side by side with nothing but their dead sons in common between them."
"But in the Old Testament, when God’s chosen people called out, 'Save us, Lord!' He heard them, and they were saved."