“I've heard it said before that those who don't learn from the past are bound to repeat it, and I just don't know what I think about that. I figure I don't have too much use for it. The past will just weigh on you if you spend too much time remembering it.”
― Wiley Cash, quote from A Land More Kind Than Home
“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.”
― Wiley Cash, quote from A Land More Kind Than Home
“But since then I've learned to just go ahead and take fairness out of the equation. If you do, things stand the chance of making a whole lot more sense.”
― Wiley Cash, quote from A Land More Kind Than Home
“[Death is] to lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.” —THOMAS WOLFE, YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN”
― Wiley Cash, quote from A Land More Kind Than Home
“It was expected that men's hands would be good and calloused by reins and shovels and the hands of other men whose lives they knew by the tough skin of their handshakes.”
― Wiley Cash, quote from A Land More Kind Than Home
“It was like a tree had sprung up between them, a tree that was just too thick to throw their arms around.”
― Wiley Cash, quote from A Land More Kind Than Home
“but some of these young folks are different, and they want times to be hard so they can prove something. Who they want to prove it to I just can't say.”
― Wiley Cash, quote from A Land More Kind Than Home
“It was like Mama was lost in the desert and had gotten so thirsty that she was willing to see anything that might make her feel better about being lost.”
― Wiley Cash, quote from A Land More Kind Than Home
“and I can tell you God makes us how he needs us to be.”
― Wiley Cash, quote from A Land More Kind Than Home
“I’ve learned to just go ahead and take fairness out of the equation. If you do, things stand the chance of making a whole lot more sense.”
― Wiley Cash, quote from A Land More Kind Than Home
“the hallway to the front door where the keys to the cruiser”
― Wiley Cash, quote from A Land More Kind Than Home
“But that tree that grew up between them was just a gnarly old thing with thick roots that ran deep and wild and tore at the ground until it opened up, and, once it did, Julie found herself clear across a great divide from Ben, so far apart that they couldn’t even see each other from where they stood.”
― Wiley Cash, quote from A Land More Kind Than Home
“The heart of the forest—and the roots of life for the four Clans—had been ripped out. Nothing would ever be the same again.”
― Erin Hunter, quote from Dawn
“Baggy and the boys were in the Bar Room on the third floor, not directly under the cupola, but not far from it. In fact, they were probably the closest humans to the sniper when he began his target practice. After the shooting resumed for the ninth or tenth time, they evidently became even more frightened and, convinced they were about to be slaughtered, decided they had to take matters into their own hands. Somehow they managed to pry open the intractable window of their little hideaway. We watched as an electrical cord was thrown out and fell almost to the ground, forty feet below. Baggy’s right leg appeared next as he flung it over the brick sill and wiggled his portly body through the opening. Not surprisingly, Baggy had insisted on going first. “Oh my God,” Wiley said, somewhat gleefully, and raised his camera. “They’re drunk as skunks.” Clutching the electrical cord with all the grit he could muster, Baggy sprung free from the window and began his descent to safety. His strategy was not apparent. He appeared to give no slack on the cord, his hands frozen to it just above his head. Evidently there was plenty of cord left in the Bar Room, and his cohorts were supposed to ease him down. As his hands rose higher above his head, his pants became shorter. Soon they were just below his knees, leaving a long gap of pale white skin before his black socks bunched around his ankles. Baggy wasn’t concerned about appearances—before, during, or after the sniper incident. The shooting stopped, and for a while Baggy just hung there, slowly twisting against the building, about three feet below the window. Major could be seen inside, clinging fiercely to the cord. He had only one leg though, and I worried that it would quickly give out. Behind him I could see two figures, probably Wobble Tackett and Chick Elliot, the usual poker gang. Wiley began laughing, a low suppressed laugh that shook his entire body. With each lull in the shooting, the town took a breath, peeked around, and hoped it was over. And each new round scared us more than the last. Two shots rang out. Baggy lurched as if he’d been hit—though in reality there was no possible way the sniper could even see him, and the suddenness evidently put too much pressure on Major’s leg. It collapsed, the cord sprang free, and Baggy screamed as he dropped like a cinder block into a row of thick boxwoods that had been planted by the Daughters of the Confederacy. The boxwoods absorbed the load, and, much like a trampoline, recoiled and sent Baggy to the sidewalk, where he landed like a melon and became the only casualty of the entire episode. I heard laughter in the distance. Without a trace of mercy, Wiley recorded the entire spectacle. The photos would be furtively passed around Clanton for years to come. For a long time Baggy didn’t move. “Leave the sumbitch out there,” I heard a cop yell below us. “You can’t hurt a drunk,” Wiley said as he caught his breath. Eventually, Baggy rose to all fours. Slowly and painfully, he crawled, like a dog hit by a truck, into the boxwoods that had saved his life, and there he rode out the storm.”
― John Grisham, quote from The Last Juror
“A man just realizing the fatal extent of his own folly was not likely to be all that rational.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from Falls the Shadow
“The skin was not skin at all, but bone. Ectoskeleton.”
― John Steakley, quote from Armor
“I can tell you have a good heart..." I sighed, opening the door to the outside." ... because the minute I met you, I wanted to fight for it.”
― Rachel Van Dyken, quote from Ruin
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