“A foolish mistake, it is, to expect the beast, because sometimes, sometimes, it is the flower's turn to own the name.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“A snake that could harm you, you don’t have much choice to kill. You wouldn’t be able to leave a cobra in your sock drawer. But a snake that is no threat will greatly define the man who decides to kill it anyways.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“People always ask, Why does God allow suffering? Why does He allow a child to be beaten? A woman to cry? A holocaust to happen? A good dog to die painfully? Simple truth is, He wants to see for Himself what we’ll do. He’s stood up the candle, put the devil at the wick, and now He wants to see if we blow it out or let it burn down. God is suffering’s biggest spectator.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“You can imagine anything you want in the dark. You can imagine your father loves you, you can imagine your mother is not disappointed, you can imagine that you are...significant. That you mean somethin' to someone. That's all I ever wanted, Fielding. To matter. That is all I've ever wanted.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“The snake has had its victories over me. And in its victories I am no longer sweet nor gentle.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“The heat came with the devil. It was the summer of 1984, and while the devil had been invited, the heat had not. It should've been expected, though. Heat is, after all, the devil's name, and when's the last time you left home without yours?”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“Sometimes the things we believe we hear are really just our own shifting needs.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“Being the devil made him important. Made him visible. And isn't that the biggest tragedy of all? When a boy has to be the devil in order to be significant?”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“I once heard someone refer to Breathed as the scar of the paradise we lost. So it was in many ways, a place with a perfect wound just below the surface.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“As we walked home, I knew from far away the trees would've looked nice, the grass would've looked green, and we would've looked like just a couple of boys walking home, armed with Midwest love and Bible Belt morals.
But up close, the trees were scorched, the grass was dead, and the boys were on the verge of tears with the belts of those morals tightening around their necks, threatening to hang them if they dared step off the stool of masculinity.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“Pain is our most intimate encounter. It lives on the very inside of us, touching everything that makes us. It claims your bones, it masters your muscles, it reels in your strength, and you never see it again. The artistry of pain is its content. The horror of it is the same.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“Sometimes this world is like red fences in the snow. There ain't no hiding who we really are.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“The moment I fell, my wings wilted like roses left too long in the vase. The misery of the bare back is to live after flight, to be the low that will never again rise. “To live on land is to live in a dimming station, but to fly above, everything sparkles, everything is endlessly crystal. Even the dry dirt improves to jewel when you can be the wings over it. “To be removed from flight is to be removed from the comet lines, the star-soaked song. How can I go on from that? How can I be something of value when I’ve lost my most valuable me? Land is my forever now, my thoroughly ended heaven. No sky will have me, no God either. “I am the warning to all little children before bedtime. Say your prayers, be done with sin, lest you become the devil, the one too sunk, no save will have him.” Dad”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“Dear Mr. Devil, Sir Satan, Lord Lucifer, and all other crosses you bear,
I cordially invite you to Breathed, Ohio. Land of hills and hay bales, of sinners and forgivers.
May you come in peace.
With great faith,
Autopsy Bliss”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“If the devil was going to come, I expected to see the myth of him. A demon with an asphalt shine. He'd be fury. A chill. A bad cough. Cujo at the car window, a ticket at the Creepshow booth, a leap into the depth of night.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“You know where the name hell came from." He crossed his hands on his lap. "After I fell, I kept repeating to myself, God will forgive me. God will forgive me. Centuries of repeating this, I started to shorten it to He'll forgive me. Then finally to one word, He'll. He'll.
"Somewhere along the way, I lost that apostrophe and now it's only Hell. But hidden in that one word is God will forgive me. God will forgive me. That is what is behind my door, you understand. A world of no apostrophes and, therefore, no hope.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“Breathed was the combination of flower and weed, of the overgrown and the mowed. It was Appalachian country, as only Southern Ohio can be, and it was beautiful as a sunbeam in waist-high grass.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“If looks were to be believed, he still was just a boy. Something of my age, though from his solemn quietude, I knew he was old in the soul. A boy whose black crayon would be the shortest in his box.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“I know the sins of everyone who comes to hell. That’s part of my misery. To know and feel theirs.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“I'm the devil. No one tells me when to stay and when to leave. But it sure is nice to be wanted. I tell you, Fielding, it sure is nice to be wanted in this very place.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“It would do none of us any good, runnin' an evil off like we're too weak and too scared to take care of our own problems. As if we zero in bravery and sword. We can't forget, we are the lords of our own 'round here, and we alone hiss back the serpent.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“I shot all the bad, but damn it all, I shot all the good as well. That's something you never quite come back from. That's something that's a fresh pain every day.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“I learned at that moment that the devil, the true one, is people...”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“I look back and think of all the ways he wasn’t the devil in that moment. The devil would break a dog’s neck, not cradle it in his own. The devil would have a mouth comparable to a crate of knives, not a mouth with teeth that held the curves of marshmallows. I think of all the devils I’ve seen in my long life. I know now how brief the innocent, how permanent the wicked. I”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“Being the devil made him a target, but it also meant he had a power he didn’t have when he was just a boy. People looked at him, listened to what he said. Being the devil made him important. Made him visible. And isn’t that the biggest tragedy of all? When a boy has to be the devil in order to be significant?”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“A snake that could harm you, you don’t have much choice to kill. You wouldn’t be able to leave a cobra in your sock drawer. But snake that is no threat will greatly define the man who decides to kill it anyways.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“No one ever said you’ve got to prepare to be hated. You’ve got to prepare for the yelling and the anger. You have got to prepare how to survive being the guilty one, even in innocence.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“And not one of you is to use the N-word that horrid woman said tonight to Sal. I swear I wish people were forced to make a list of names and recite them every time they use that word. "A list of the names of every black man, woman, and child hated,beaten, killed for the color of their flesh. It should be law—by God, it should be law—that if you say that word, you must then say their names. “No one wants to say one word and then realize it means so many more.”
― quote from The Summer that Melted Everything
“Before I knew it, the first animal had entered the chute. Various cowboys were at different positions around the animal and began carrying out their respective duties. Tim looked at me and yelled, “Stick it in!” With utter trepidation, I slid the wand deep into the steer’s rectum. This wasn’t natural. This wasn’t normal. At least it wasn’t for me. This was definitely against God’s plan.
I was supposed to check the monitor and announce if the temperature was above ninety-degrees. The first one was fine. But before I had a chance to remove the probe, Tim set the hot branding iron against the steer’s left hip. The animal let out a guttural Mooooooooooooo!, and as he did, the contents of its large intestine emptied all over my hand and forearm.
Tim said, “Okay, Ree, you can take it out now.” I did. I didn’t know what to do. My arm was covered in runny, stinky cow crap. Was this supposed to happen? Should I say anything? I glanced at my sister, who was looking at me, completely horrified.
The second animal entered the chute. The routine began again. I stuck it in. Tim branded. The steer bellowed. The crap squirted out. I was amazed at how consistent and predictable the whole nasty process was, and how nonchalant everyone--excluding my sister--was acting. But then slowly…surely…I began to notice something.
On about the twentieth animal, I began inserting the thermometer. Tim removed his branding iron from the fire and brought it toward the steer’s hip. At the last second, however, I fumbled with my device and had to stop for a moment. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that when I paused, Tim did, too. It appeared he was actually waiting until I had the thermometer fully inserted before he branded the animal, ensuring that I’d be right in the line of fire when everything came pouring out. He had planned this all along, the dirty dog.
Seventy-eight steers later, we were finished. I was a sight. Layer upon layer of manure covered my arm. I’m sure I was pale and in shock. The cowboys grinned politely. Tim directed me to an outdoor faucet where I could clean my arm. Marlboro Man watched as he gathered up the tools and the gear…and he chuckled.
As my sister and I pulled away in the car later that day, she could only say, “Oh. My. God.” She made me promise never to return to that awful place.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I’d found out later that this, from Tim’s perspective, was my initiation. It was his sick, twisted way of measuring my worth.”
― Ree Drummond, quote from The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels
“I was carried away, swept along by the mighty stream of words pouring from the hundreds of pages. To me it was the ultimate book: once you had read it, neither your own life nor the world you lived in would ever look the same.”
― Dai Sijie, quote from Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
“But then every man is ludicrous if you look at him from outside, without taking into account what’s going on in his heart and mind.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
“Funny to get so close...only to have him ripped away again.”
― Seth Grahame-Smith, quote from Unholy Night
“Instead, power went to those who made things happen: businessmen and local magistrates. Over time, human nature being what it is, these men would create a kind of nobility, sometimes even buying titles from cash-poor foreigners, but this in itself underscores the point. Upward mobility was part of the Dutch character: if you worked hard and were smart, you rose in stature. Today that is a byword of a healthy society; in the seventeenth century it was weird.”
― Russell Shorto, quote from The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America
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Long After
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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