Nightwoods Quotes
"You try your best to love the world despite obvious flaws in design and execution. And you take care of whatever needy things present themselves to you during your passage through it. Otherwise, you’re worthless."
"The main lesson Luce had learned was that you couldn’t count on anybody."
"Life without wheels had a few drawbacks. Hitchhiking, you placed more hope in other people than they would generally bear."
"The natural world would go on and on just fine whether you watched or not. Your existence was incidental."
"Most of the time, they couldn’t change themselves, even if they were desperate to be somebody different from who they were."
"Luce held firm to the belief that quiet and solitude were good for you, offering peace, or at least hope for peace."
"The amazing power of saying kiss my ass and walking out the door."
"Life goes one way only, and whatever opinions you hold about the past have nothing to do with anything but your own damn weakness."
"Let it go. No apologies. Repent was a lost word in their lexicon."
"The way they get you is, you trade your freedoms for entertainment."
"No looking back. Life goes one way only, and whatever opinions you hold about the past have nothing to do with anything but your own damn weakness."
"You make your mistakes, and then fuck it. You don’t dwell, you move forward."
"Even now, cooking off about fifty gallons every fall when the evenings grew crisp and he and his white-headed buddies wanted to get away from the wives and camp out in the high mountains for a couple of weeks, running their coon dogs and recollecting lies from their youth."
"The new world had gotten dangerous, and Bud embodied the new."
"Amazing, as well, to be gainfully self-employed so soon after arriving in town wondering how far he could stretch a pocket of greasy bills."
"Always an appealing trait, but especially now, when anything about a couple of new kids would be so interesting."
"If you’d come to my house saying the things you did last time, you’d have found yourself at the bottom of the lake by midnight."
"Better than getting away from the law in white-knuckle races over twisted mountain roads was never having to run because you looked plain as dirt and they paid you no heed."
"Fifteen hundred fifty-six and seven-eighths, on the nose."
"Life could be enlarged by burning a few gallons of twenty-cent gas as an offering to the mountains."
"Selling the Lodge won’t nearly cover the taxes. But it might buy us some time."
"Love, at least sustaining it, had not been his best talent."
"He had gotten the impression as a boy that legendary Indian things involving giant flying lizards or spear-fingered monsters happened up there."
"A ghost that doesn’t wish you harm but can’t do you any good either."
"Have to be in Tibet to validate some of those upper peaks."
"Put a level to her eyebrows and the bubble would stay inside the lines."
"Like lighting a fresh cigarette off the butt of an old one."
"Remembering the days when we were like Greek gods. Mighty and idiotic."
"We are who we are. Ten or eighty. What we see in the mirror is all that changes."
"All the urgent chemicals raging around the blood course."
"It’s one of the perks of the job, plenty of time for driving and thinking."
"The most popular girls are curvy armloads levered up onto stiletto heels."
"A shadow of wings brushed him but he didn’t even look up to see hawk or raven or buzzard."
"Fe, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman."
"What I want most is the ability to whistle the song of every bird in the area."
"Live every one as it came and not let people intrude on you."
"Live out of sight from the bullshit of everyday commerce."
"If you're not who you want to be, at least act like who you want to be."
"Just angry, not really thinking or planning, Luce said, I’m going to get back at you."
"You’re letting your private imagination run wild in bad directions."
"Well, as the philosophers say, everybody’s got to be somewhere."
"Real dark lonesome nights, way down that rough dirt road."
"Public knowledge. Which is simply a bullshit mix of facts and opinions."
"But go ahead on and make up whatever mean stories get you fired up."
"And by the way, pretty girl, who are you to threaten me?"
"You better figure this out before somebody gets hurt."
"Way I see it, up there by the lake, if somebody was to holler, nobody would hear it."
"People don’t change, Lola said. Maybe you’re still young enough to pretend that’s not true."
"Putting one foot in front of the other and keeping going is about all the pleasure you get in life after you quit being young."
"Life is mostly shit, and it heaps on more when you’re already so loaded down you think you can’t go on."
"Truth isn’t in your own self, and it sure isn’t in theirs."
"When you start fretting the day-by-day you lose track of the long view."
"But life is mostly shit, and it heaps on more when you’re already so loaded down you think you can’t go on."
"He entertains no plans, no list of places to look."
"His theory is, get calm and let the power of money speak and tell its whereabouts."
"Life can get fucked up fast when you try to be a pleaser."
"You can't fix the past. It's broken beyond repair, not worth thinking about."
"They put great faith in their feel for the various materials necessary for fire, how to light them up."
"The difference between dry kindling on a clear day and damp kindling in a drizzle."
"Memory is so damn harsh when it grabs you tight."
"Shit piles fast and deep when you act on one bad idea right after another."
"Anything you try to do to shape it in your favor is likely to rain down a deluge on all your hopes."
"Hoard up your love for each other and state your rage by way of things that want to burn."
"Pleasers never get paid back a fraction commensurate with their effort."
"All you control is your mind. Make it like the lake on a still day."
"Keep running. But it isn’t the Lodge and Luce they’re running from."
"Accept one and you have to accept the other, that’s the deal."
"Let the night play out, and go on in the morning."
"Making fire from sparks is a lovely and fragile art."
"Bright rings misting around the scallop-shaded streetlamps."
"Make it quick. No more than switching off the porch light before bed."
"Away they all flew like the down of a thistle."
"No telling for sure whether he is still going or long gone. Fled into the distance or absorbed into the landscape, which does not punish or reward but cleanses all bones equally."