Donald Ray Pollock · 261 pages
Rating: (12.1K votes)
“Some people were born just so they could be buried.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, quote from The Devil All the Time
“Unless he had whiskey running through his veins, Willard came to the clearing every morning and evening to talk to God. Arvin didn't know which was worse, the drinking or the praying. As far back as he could remember, it seemed that his father had fought the Devil all the time.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, quote from The Devil All the Time
“It's hard to live a good life...It seems like the Devil don't ever let up.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, quote from The Devil All the Time
“He imagined the door to a sad, empty room closing with a faint click, never to be opened again, and that calmed him a little.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, quote from The Devil All the Time
“They's a lot of no-good sonofabitches out there."
Arvin asks, "More than a hundred?"
Willard laughed a little and put the truck in gear. "Yeah, at least that many.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, quote from The Devil All the Time
“Strangers complained about the stench, but the locals liked to brag that it was the sweet smell of money.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, quote from The Devil All the Time
“Some people were born just so they could be buried; his mother was like that, and he’d always”
― Donald Ray Pollock, quote from The Devil All the Time
“. Nature's so terribly good. Don't you think so, Mr. Stanhope?"
Stanhope was standing by, silent, while Mrs. Parry communed with her soul and with one or two of her neighbours on the possibilities of dressing the Chorus. He turned his head and answered, "That Nature is terribly good? Yes, Miss Fox. You do mean 'terribly'?"
"Why, certainly," Miss Fox said. "Terribly--dreadfully--very."
"Yes," Stanhope said again. "Very. Only--you must forgive me; it comes from doing so much writing, but when I say 'terribly' I think I mean 'full of terror'. A dreadful goodness."
"I don't see how goodness can be dreadful," Miss Fox said, with a shade of resentment in her voice. "If things are good they're not terrifying, are they?"
"It was you who said 'terribly'," Stanhope reminded her with a smile, "I only agreed."
"And if things are terrifying," Pauline put in, her eyes half closed and her head turned away as if she asked a casual question rather of the world than of him, "can they be good?"
He looked down on her. "Yes, surely," he said, with more energy. "Are our tremors to measure the Omnipotence?”
― Charles Williams, quote from Descent into Hell
“We have nothing in this life of suffocating obligation but our motherfucking impudence!”
― Mark Leyner, quote from The Tetherballs of Bougainville
“He got to his feet and stumbled away from the stench of his vomit, making his way through this graveyard of old glories, heading for the darkest place he could find in which to hide his giddy head.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Coldheart Canyon
“For those of us with a bookish bent, reading is a reflexive response to everything. This is how we deal with the world and anything that comes our way. We have always known that there is a book for every occasion and every obsession. When in doubt, we are always looking things up.”
― Diane Schoemperlen, quote from Our Lady of the Lost and Found: A Novel of Mary, Faith, and Friendship
“But how glum he looks now." She threw some daisies at him. Then, after a pause, she added mockingly: "It's hunger, my dear. Good Lord, how dependent men are on food!”
― John Dos Passos, quote from Three Soldiers
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