Quotes 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.”
― 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

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Popular quotes

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― Eudora Welty, quote from One Writer's Beginnings

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But Cockatrice never crowed the canon. So under him the day lost its meaning and its direction, and the animals lost any sense of time or purpose. Their land became strange to them. A terrible feeling of danger entered their souls, of things undone, of treasures unprotected. They were tired all the day long, and at night they did not sleep. And it was a most pitiful sight to see, how they all went about with hunched shoulders, heads tucked in, limping here and there as if they were forever walking into an ill wind, and flinching at every sound as if the wind carried arrows.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., quote from The Book of the Dun Cow

“No Mirrors in My Nana’s House” Sweet Honey in the Rock LYRICS BY YSAYE MARIA BARNWELL Sweet Honey in the Rock is a Grammy Award–winning vocal group of black women vocalists founded in 1973 by Bernice Johnson Reagon. The group’s members have changed during its long tenure, but it retains a core of five vocalists and a sign-language interpreter. Their performances are deeply embodied celebrations of black women’s lived experiences. The group’s name is derived from Psalm 81:16: “But you would be fed with the finest of wheat; with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.” Sign-language interpreter Dr. Ysaye Barnwell joined Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1979 and appears in more than thirty recordings with the group. She is the author of one of the group’s most popular recordings, “No Mirrors in My Nana’s House.” It is a stirring piece that reveals how the loving protection of black women can shield black girls from a painful world that seeks to negate their beauty and worth. In 1998 the lyrics became a children’s book published by Harcourt Brace. There were no mirrors in my Nana’s house, no mirrors in my Nana’s house. There were no mirrors in my Nana’s house, no mirrors in my Nana’s house. And the beauty that I saw in everything was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun). I never knew that my skin was too black. I never knew that my nose was too flat. I never knew that my clothes didn’t fit. I never knew there were things that I’d missed, cause the beauty in everything was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun); . . . was in her eyes. There were no mirrors in my Nana’s house, no mirrors in my Nana’s house. And the beauty that I saw in everything was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun). I was intrigued by the cracks in the walls. I tasted, with joy, the dust that would fall. The noise in the hallway was music to me. The trash and the rubbish just cushioned my feet. And the beauty in everything was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun). . . . was in her eyes. There were no mirrors in my Nana’s house, no mirrors in my Nana’s house. And the beauty that I saw in everything was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun). The world outside was a magical place. I only knew love. I never knew hate, and the beauty in everything was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun). . . . was in her eyes. There were no mirrors in my Nana’s house, no mirrors in my Nana’s house. There were no mirrors in my Nana’s house, no mirrors in my Nana’s house. And the beauty that I saw in everything was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun).”
― Melissa V. Harris-Perry, quote from Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America

“Robert Phelps, a biographer of Colette, said about watching, 'Along with love and work, this is the third great salvation. For whenever someone is seriously watching, a form of lost innocence is restored. It will not last, but during those minutes his self-consciousness is relieved.' Noticing keeps you alive.”
― Molly Peacock, quote from The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life's Work at 72

“A good logger does not raze the forest, but only thins it.”
― LaVyrle Spencer, quote from The Endearment

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