Chasing Fireflies Quotes
"If he closed them just right, the exhaust pipe comet transformed into a fanciful fountain of fireflies dancing along the South Georgia asphalt."
"She was a symphony of sound and a king's banquet of smell, feel, and otherworldly power."
"The driver of the Impala was female. Skinny fingers. Thin skin. White knuckles."
"The kid looked straight ahead, clutching a spiral-bound notebook and pen. His skin was white and covered in scars."
"She grabbed the brown bag, sucked hard on the courage, and turned her spit-filled tirade back at the windshield."
"The train was a panoramic display of clickety-clack glory, the sum of which reached out ahead of the train only to sneak around and rise up through your spine like a jackhammer exiting the earth."
"You could take the kid out of the candy store, but not the candy store out of the kid."
"Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it."
"Sometimes it was just bragging. Then again, not many people had his job."
"The coastal rivers of Georgia, like the Satilla, the Altamaha, and the Little Brunswick, flow out of the west Georgia mountains through the Buffalo Swamp and empty into the cordgrass of the marsh flats."
"Just because a chicken has wings doesn't mean it can fly."
"Kids are like a spring, or a Stretch Armstrong. No matter how many times they're passed around, passed off, and passed on ... they snap back."
"The words 'when your folks show up' sent shock waves through me that echo still."
"The thing he wanted least is now the thing he needs the most."
"Horses are always talking. The shoes coming off their feet are akin to a scream at the top of their lungs."
"Tommye was something special—a quiet, pug-nosed, country girl with an accent that could melt butter and make old men forget their aches and pains."
"At the end of the day, all I've got, the only thing I can control, is my word."
"Fastest way to the heart is through the stomach."
"If you can't speak, then how do you laugh? And if you can't laugh, then how do you cry?"
"I once thought maybe that weight was a chip. As I got older and could see the forest for the trees, I saw that it was more like a yoke."
"Your entire life is consumed with two opposing ideas: On the one hand, you know you've been abandoned, rejected, thrown out on the street. Otherwise, you'd be with your parents."
"And false hope is worse than no hope at all."
"He asked me twice in the same minute what I liked. And he listened for the answer."
"I guess if you ate enough of them, you'd get big as the moon."
"Oh ... never mind that. It's just God moving the furniture."
"Once you've been dead, everything else is gravy."
"I used to work at that bank, and ... I used to go to that church ... funny how life works."
"Forgive your enemies—it messes with their heads."
"The only thing he's got left. And some things are sacred. No matter how much money you have."
"Years ago, I lost a son. He was kidnapped and ... killed. So when I got out, I decided—we decided—that we'd just open our house to kids, no matter their background or condition."
"The only monster you need to worry about in this life is the one that stares at you from the mirror each morning. You tame him, make friends with him, and the rest of life is nothing you can't handle."
"You can't hurt cold. If you get all warm and fuzzy for each new set of arms, you learn that most, if not all, are just as cold as the last."
"Because when I asked the boy the same question, he said he used to live in a trailer with you just down a little dirt road from Jesup Brothers Bottlers."
"Everything I know about fishing I learned from Uncle Willee."
"The kid was competitive-he liked winning, but he'd also grown comfortable with me."
"This kid... the one that don't talk... he ain't real social."
"Uncle Willee's way of laughing at his past, mostly. He quit caring what the world thought about him a long time ago."
"Think about it, Counselor. For all intents and purposes, this town hung William McFarland on a murder he didn't commit."
"People are good at hiding who they really are."
"What I know about Jack McFarland. You of all people should know that appearances can be deceiving."
"If you believe that, I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you."
"It's the hurting that makes it right ... makes it worth doing."
"I have lived my entire life in a chasm between hope and hate."
"The fire burned out. The breeze picked up the flakes of ash and spun them on the air like feathers fluttering off an angel's wings."
"If God can make a firefly's butt light up like a star, then anything is possible. Anything."
"There was a day when I'd take that as a compliment, but I guess that really just tells you how little I thought of myself."
"I made a couple hundred movies, and I regret every . . . single . . . one."
"Damaged souls look for other damaged souls. And when we find each other, we coexist."
"You know, you're not the only one with a hole in your chest. Girls get them too. We just fill them differently."
"You sleep with enough of the wrong guys and do enough of the wrong drugs with the wrong needles and do all that over a long enough period of time, and ... it's a given."
"I found a family out there. And it took a lot of drugs to keep the family together."
"If you can stay up all night acting like a couple of idiots, you can work all day like honest folk."
"But you can't bury anger so deep that it doesn't erupt at some point like Vesuvius and splatter your soul across the earth."
"It's like all the bad stuff that happened to him poured into one side of his heart and fell out the other."
"If they're lucky, they'll suffer a clot in either the brain or lungs, which will end the misery."
"While it can and does kill the body, maybe the worst damage occurs in one's psyche."
"I contracted about four years ago. The business is pretty good about testing, but it's not foolproof."
"If he liked the story, he smiled and placed it gently on the shelf behind him."
"Then I felt something in my hands and looked down to find a book in them. I opened it and found the story of me."
"A conversation is always better when the other person gets to talk back."
"My life has been real different than I thought. Ain't turned out how I hoped ... nor dreamt."
"It's the bad that lets you know how good the good really is."
"Sometimes good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment."
"The point is not the fishing ... the point is the kid."
"There are still things in this life that are beautiful."
"Every adoptee lives knowing that at one time he or she had a real name."
"Inside you is a thing worth putting on a pedestal-worth putting out there for all the world to see."
"Words that soak into your ears are whispered, not yelled."
"You can put your boots in the oven, but that doesn't make them biscuits."
"You tell the truth ... the first time ... every time."
"Men spend their lives asking 'Who am I' when the real question is 'Whose am I?'"
"You ought to see him when he really gets constipated. He can chew on an idea for days before he lets you in on it."
"Care for the roots, and the flower will bloom all on its own."
"He gave up what he couldn't keep to gain what he couldn't lose."
"Becoming a man don't happen overnight. It's something that's passed down."
"I should've raised you better. Come Sunday, you're front and center. You been spending too much time fishing."
"Every boy enters a baseball game wanting a souvenir. A pennant, a cap, a program. These mark the moment; they're proof that we went, we watched, we were a part of the greatest game in the world."
"Sooner or later, somebody somewhere is gonna have to trust that boy with something."
"Listen. I'm afraid that no matter how hard you try, kids will make fun of kids who are different."
"When he found he couldn't talk, he just started slipping the words out his fingers."
"If one ever slipped through the cracks, it's him."
"People who cut the heart of a child ought to have that same knife shoved up their spine and broken off at the hilt."
"In a short time, he'd given me a lot of pictures."
"The state will resume custody. Given his past, his abuse... chances are good he'll remain a ward of the state until he reaches maturity."
"The truth is a lot like the milkman's bucket."
"You can read people the same way. Their shoes don't lie."
"Every day, no matter what I'd painted the day before, I got a new canvas, washed white."
"I don't know how he got that way. Same dad, same mom, same town, same life. I used to think I had something to do with it, that maybe I could bring him back, but then ... well, I couldn't."
"You live with a lie long enough, and pretty soon it starts to sound true."
"Words that sink into your heart ... they're whispered, not yelled."
"I've been right my whole life. I'm not about to change now."
"Every boy is born with a hole in his belly. If his dad don't fill it, it festers and becomes an aching black hole—one that he'll spend his waking hours trying to fill. Mostly with things that do him more harm than good."
"Lord knows I'm not as young as I once was, and I've made my fair share of mistakes, but ... well, I ain't that old, and if I got to put a square peg in a round hole, well ... That boy might not have been born of my loins, but he's been born of my heart. And I reckon that's good enough."