Tom Franklin · 274 pages
Rating: (34.5K votes)
“Maybe Larry was wrong about the word friend, maybe he'd been shoved away from everybody for so long all he was was a sponge for the wrongs other people did.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“Was that what childhood was? Things rushing by out a window, the trees connected by motion, going too fast for him to notice the consequences?”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“The seat belt irked his father more than Uncle Colin's not eating meat, because, though his father never said it, Larry knew he considered seat belts cowardly.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“Well, sugar," she said, limping off, "don't be too hard on yourself. Now and again it's okay to let yourself off the hook."
But that was the trouble, wasn't it? Letting himself off the hook had been his way of life.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“...in the woods, if you stopped, if you grew still, you'd hear a whole new set of sounds, wind rasping through silhouetted leaves and the cries and chatter of blue jays and brown thrashers and redbirds and sparrows, the calling of crows and hawks, squirrels barking, frogs burping, the far braying of dogs, armadillos snorkeling through dead leaves...”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“He found the first skipped meals were the hardest, the hunger a hollow ache. The longer he went without eating, though, the second day, the third, the pain would subside from an ache to the memory of an ache and finally to only the memory of a memory. Until you ate you didn't know how hungry you were, how empty you'd become. Wallace's visits had shown him that being lonesome was its own fast, that after going unnourished for so long, even the foulest bite could remind your body how much it needed to eat. That you could be starving and not even know it.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“At some point, Alice slipped one arm and then the other into the coat's sleeves, she buttoned its buttons, starting at the top. Silas had followed her, still not seeing what an emblem of defeat, shame, loss, hopelessness, the coat was. With such gaps in his understanding, he saw very clearly how the boy he'd been had grown up to be the man he was.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“He was tired of having only three channels.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“Soon the Mississippi night hummed by outside his windows, bug, bird, frog, the wind on his face.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“Their lives had stopped, frozen, as if in a picture, and the days were nothing more than empty squares on a calendar.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“The land had a way of covering the wrongs of people.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“never seen real darkness, not in the city, but how, if you stood peeing off the cabin porch on a moonless night, or took a walk through the woods where the treetops stitched out the stars, you could almost forget you were there, you felt invisible. Country dark, his mother called it.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“The visit hadn't lasted much longer, and Wallace never said what he'd done, but after Larry watched him go, he'd spent the rest of the night on his porch as daylight crept through the trees like am army of crafty boys.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“Larry felt a strange forgiveness for him because all monsters were misunderstood.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“they say bad things come in threes, so we got our quota for a while ain’t we.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“You can bury the past but it always seems to come back, one way or another.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“Maybe Larry was wrong about the word friend, maybe he'd been shoved away from everybody for so long all he was was a sponge for the wrongs other people did. Maybe, after all this time, he'd started to believe their version of him.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“Where’s that tree?” Larry said, thinking he might take Cindy. “Is the rope still there?” Glancing at him, his father said, “Naw.” “What happened to it?” “They cut it down. Mill did.” He pushed his plate aside and rose from the table. “Enjoyed it,” he said, got another beer from the refrigerator, and went into the den.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“smell of natural gas, piped from the big metal tank in the backyard, filled once a month by a truck.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“It was country dark, as Alice Jones had called these nights, the absence of any light but what you brought to the table. He sped up, his eyes focused on what was before him, and drove toward home.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“Sound more mean than crazy,” he said. “I don’t know if I want to go”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“interviewing that people said he could make a stump confess to saying “timber.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“Bad cotton country meant good moonshining country.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“... that she might slip off into that space where she stared, go for good to whatever she kept watching.”
― Tom Franklin, quote from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“No matter how much kids beg to be treated like adults, nobody likes to let go of their childhood. You wish for it and dream of it and the second you have it, you wonder what you've done. You wonder what it is you've become.”
― Daniel H. Wilson, quote from Robopocalypse
“He did change history. He did, he did!” Gabil hopped again, twice, lost his footing, and toppled to the floor. He bounded to his feet and did a little jig of sorts. “Ha! It’s fascinating! It’s magnicalicious!” “Please, settle down. That’s not even a word.” “Why not?” Gabil said. “If Thomas can change history, I think I have the right to change a few words.”
― Ted Dekker, quote from The Complete Circle Series
“They were all as timeless as that moment of rescue, perpetuated but forever just occurring, these ornaments, utensils, and mementos stranded in the Terazín bazaar, objects that for reasons one could never know had outlived their former owners and survived the process of destruction, so that I could now see my own faint shadow image barely perceptible among them.”
― W.G. Sebald, quote from Austerlitz (Penguin Essentials)
“I don't know if there is actually more rain here in England, or if it was just that the rain seemed to be so deliberately annoying. Every drop hit the window with a peevish "Am I bothering you? Does this make you cold and wet? Oh, sorry.”
― Maureen Johnson, quote from The Madness Underneath
“YOU don’t choose your life; it chooses you. There’s no point asking why life has reserved certain joys or griefs, you just accept them and carry on.”
― Paulo Coelho, quote from Adultery
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