“Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“The heart's in it then, spinning dreams, and torment is on the way. The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“You got to be ready to die every day - then you got a chance.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“Pine trees with low limbs spread over fresh snow made a stronger vault for the spirit than pews and pulpits ever could.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“This is how sudden things happened that haunted forever.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“Love and hate hold hands always so it made natural sense that they'd get confused by upset married folk in the wee hours once in a while and a nosebleed or bruised breast might result. But it just seemed proof that a great foulness was afoot in the world when a no-strings roll in the hay with a stranger led to chipped teeth or cigarette burns on the wrist.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“Fading light buttered the ridges until shadows licked them clean and they were lost to nightfall.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“Nobody here wants to be awful," he said. He hopped a little as he zipped up. "It's just nobody here knows all the rules yet, and that makes a rocky time.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“I said shut up once already, with my mouth.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“She would never cry where her tears might be seen and counted against her.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“The first time Ree kissed a man it was not a man, but Gail acting as a man, and as the kissing progressed and Gail acting as a man pushed her backwards onto a blanket of pine needles in shade and slipped her tongue deep into Ree's mouth, Ree found herself sucking on the wiggling tongue of a man in her mind, sucking that plunging tongue of the man in her mind until she tasted morning coffee and cigars and spit leaked from between her lips and down her chin. She opened her eyes then and smiled, and Gail yet acting the man roughed up her breasts with grabs and pinches, kissed her neck, murmuring and Ree said, "Just like that! I want it to be just like that!" There came three seasons of giggling and practice, puckering readily anytime they were alone, each being the man and the woman, each on top and bottom, pushing for it with grunts or receiving it with signs. The first time Ree kissed a boy who was not a girl his lips were soft and timid on hers, dry and unmoving, until finally she had to say it and did, "Tongue, honey, tongue," and the boy she called honey turned away saying, "Yuck!”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“The men came to mind as mostly idle between nights of running wild or time in the pen, cooking moon and gathering around the spout, with ears chewed, fingers chopped, arms shot away, and no apologies grunted ever. The women came to mind bigger, closer, with their lonely eyes and homely yellow teeth, mouths clamped against smiles, working in the hot fields from can to can't, hands tattered rough as dry cobs, lips cracked all winter, a white dress for marrying, a black dress for burying, and Ree nodded yup. Yup.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“The Dolly's around here can't be seen to coddle a snitch's family --- that's the always been our way. We're old blood, us people, and our ways was set firm long before hot shot baby Jesus ever even burped milk'n sh*& yellow.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“That water's colder'n hell!"
That's what makes it good. That's what makes it help all your bruises'n bumps'n stuff."
It's colder'n a goddam witch's tit in there!”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“Gail had a baby named Ned who was four months old, and a new look of baffled hurt, a left-behind sadness, like she saw that the great world kept spinning onward and away while she'd overnight become glued to her spot.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“He was almost twenty and Ree knew most girls would call him handsome or dreamy or some such. Sandy hair, blue eyes, put together strong, with bright teeth and one of those smiles.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“Ree Dolly stood at the break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries and saw meat. Meat hung from trees across the creek. Carcasses hung pale of flesh with fatty gleam from low limbs of saplings in the side yards. Three halt haggard houses formed a kneeling rank on the far creekside and each had two or more skinned torsos dangling by rope from sagged limbs, venison left to the weather for two nights and three days so the early blossoming of decay might round the flavor, sweeten that meat to the bone.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“Ree followed a path made by prey uphill through scrub, across a bald knob and downhill into a section of pine trees and pine scent and that pious shade and silence pines create. Pine trees in low limbs spread over fresh snow made a stronger vault for the spirit than pews and pulpits ever could.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“Moons of ache glowed in spaces of her meat and when she moved the moons banged together and stunned.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“Ree sat chilled inside her squat tent. To occupy her mind, she decided to name all the Miltons: Thump, Blond, Catfish, Spider, Whoop, Rooster, Scrap… Lefty, Dog, Punch, Pinkeye, Momsy… Cotton, Hog-jaw, Ten Penny, Peashot…”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“When the mushrooms took hold she sensed some of the gods calling to her from inside her own chest and followed their urging outside into the yard and up the sunny slope into the trees. She felt all gooey, gooey with the slobbered love of various gods gathered within, and smiling full-time went about the woods looking to collect butterflies and pet them until they gave milk, or maybe roll in the dirt until she felt China through her skin.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“This floor, here? I remember when this floor here used to get to jumpin' like a fuckin' bunny from all the dancin'. Everybody dancin' around all night, stoned out of their minds - and it always was the happy kind of stoned back then.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“Thump Milton loomed over Ree, a fabled man, his face a monument of Ozark stone, with juts and angles and cold shaded parts the sun never touched.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“Ree needed often to inject herself with pleasant sounds, stab those sounds past the constant screeching, squalling hubbub regular life raised inside her spirit, poke the soothing sounds past that racket and down deep where her jittering soul paced on a stone slab in a gray room, agitated and endlessly provoked but yearning to hear something that might bring a moment’s rest.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“As the frosty bits dwindled the wind slowed and big snowflakes began falling as serenely as anything could fall the distance from the sky. Ree listened to lapping shores while snowflakes gathered on her. She sat unmoving and let snow etch her outline in deepening clean whiteness. The valley seemed in twilight though it was not yet noon. The three houses across the creek put on white shawls and burning lights squinted golden from the windows. Meat still hung from limbs in the side yards, and snow began clinging to the limbs and meat. Ocean waves kept sighing to shore while snow built everywhere she could see.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
“I'd get lost without the weight of you two on my shoulders.”
― Daniel Woodrell, quote from Winter's Bone
Daniel Woodrell
Born place: in Springfield, MO, The United States
Born date March 4, 1953
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“If you must lie, lie in the arms of the one you love.
If you must steal, steal away from bad company.
And if you must drink, drink in the moments that take your breath away.”
― Bella Andre, quote from I Only Have Eyes for You
“We are the only species on earth that not only refuses to give up milk but furthermore insists on drinking the milk of another species. No adult cows ever drink milk, and adult humans are certainly not meant to be drinking it, either! As is always the case, when we go against nature’s laws, we suffer the consequences.”
― Kimberly Snyder, quote from The Beauty Detox Solution: Eat Your Way to Radiant Skin, Renewed Energy and the Body You've Always Wanted
“Me too, Arch,” Jeremiah said. “I want an answer about my request to transfer. Even now, my balls are shrinking in anticipation of going back out in the cold. I said I'd give my life protecting humanity, but my balls were never in the bargain.”
― Rose Wynters, quote from Voluptuous Vindication
“Americans, like people everywhere, are in thrall to their visions of the past, rarely realizing the extent to which their understanding of history shapes behavior in the here and now. Historical understanding defines people’s very sense of what is thinkable and achievable. As a result, many have lost the ability to imagine a world that is substantially different from and better than what exists today.”
― Oliver Stone, quote from The Untold History of The United States
“My wish for you... is that your skeptic-eclectic brain be flooded with the light of truth.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, quote from The First Circle
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