Whiskey When We're Dry

This life is cut with trails unrode. There was a time I resented that fact, the cruelty of being stuck to only one. But age like I got teaches you to be grateful for those trails untook. The old mind can wander their lengths and see what the eyes was never allowed, what the eyes would have missed. I’ve had time to wander those trails that interest me.

It is the burden of the survivor to wake one day and discover in yourself a stranger.

Ain't wise for a man with shallow secrets to drink deep.

Tea has a manner of setting the world right.

A problem with prosperity is that it makes a place long on crowds and short on people.

I ain't sure about Heaven, brother, but I know for certain we make our own hell.

What started the war, Pa?" His eyes settled on me. "Stories, Jessilyn, We tell ourselves the wrong stories.

...Pa was a good soul, full of respect for the women in his life, which might be the straightest measure of a man.

Remember is the name of all children. In that name is the seed and the thaw.

It is the burden of the survivor to wake up one day and discover in yourself a stranger.

...this is all spectacle for you... You speak of good and evil, and so does he. You speak of Heaven and loyalty, and so does he. You speak of brothers and sisters as he speaks of his constituency. Like him, you spin the world so you may be its savior.

I was the only person in this world who knew what had come of her. I alone knew the end of her story. But only its final line.

Woman is water and the rivers in me is dried up.

Your blood is not your fault.

I wondered what traveling that fast did to a soul.

If you got a ma looking out for you, all you got to do is grow up.

Some things in this world you don't never forget even if you ain't got no memories of it.

Daughters are what you live for and what will kill you, Straight.

Pa’s eyes found mine. “We got issue with men. There’s a shortage of answers in this world. It’s the fool who thinks he got them.

Ain’t it queer the Lord lets us assign names? So much we can’t touch in this life, and yet He give us the power to pick our name. Now that’s something.

She lifted her hat and used the underside of a wrist.

How could you kill as you have?” For as long as we’ve been the Good, we’ve invented histories to so convince our children. We heed preachers upon tilted altars. We let them spin this world. So long as we remain at its center.

Together we held our breaths not as people stopped before some man's idol but as souls bent before the alter of awe.

Men like my boy see this rich land and turn inward. It makes them foolhardy and narrow of thought. They don't see the place but for their own reflection in it.

Precedent." He drew more from the pipe. "What the American mind fears most.

Do you believe sin is handed down, one generation to the next?" "I reckon it piles like snow.

For as long as we've been the Good, we've invented histories to so convince our children. We heed preachers upon tilted altars. We let them spin this world. So long as we remain at its center.

It went on in increments not tallied by any earthly measure. For centuries we wander that snow with their blood running from our elbows.

I know, Jess, how easy it is to doubt. But He must be watching. He must. We share a cold world, Jess, and yet as long as heat exists, how can we not trust its source?