Allen Eskens Quotes

Add to that cauldron an ever increasing measure of cheap vodka--a form of self-medication that quelled the inner scream but amplified the outer crazy--and you get a picture of the mother I left behind.

That you understand how wrong it is to judge someone before you know their whole story.

While it was true that Angus was legally an adult, he'd taken a tumble a few years back that left him a bubble or two off center.

In a perfect world, ignorant notions should die a quick death. A thing like racism, if it can't find a kindred spirit...it's like a dog barking at a stone. But if you can find just one other person who thinks like you . ..well even the most irrational belief can grow roots. Small minded people feed off each other and before you know it, you have mobs, and you have burning crosses, and lynchings" .

she lived her life with her fingers in her ears, as though the truth would not exist if she never heard the words spoken aloud.

Tufts of hair stuck out of my head in all directions, like I'd been cow-licked by a drunken heifer.

Now, as I walk back to him, carrying these rocks, I also carry the weight of Jenni's words to me: "I'd never want you to become someone bad because of me". That memory presses me down and threatens to buckle my knees more than any bundle or rocks ever could.

He was a quiet man who could command attention with a simple glance or nod, a man who possessed equal part strength and gentleness and wore them, not in layers, but blended like fine leather.

But memories aren't like photographs; they can't halt the passing of time. Instead, they lay like footsteps along a path each determined by the step that came before and colored by the ones to follow.

What if, in all the eons of enternity, this was the one and only time that I would be alive. How would I live my life if that were the case? Know what I mean? What if this was all there is?"
"Well, I guess there'd be a lot of disappointed dead priests," I said.
Carl chuckled. "Well, there that," he said. "But it also means that this is our heaven. We are surrounded every day by the wonders of life, wonders beyond comprehension that we simply take for granted. I decided that day that I would live my life-not simply exist. If I died and discovered heaven on the other side, whell, that'd be just fine and dandy. But if I didn't live my life as if I was already in heave, and I died and found only nothingness, well...I would have wasted my life. I would have wasted my one chance in all of history to be alive.

I had never seen her smile before. At least, not beyond the cursory upturn at the edges of her lips as we passed each other in the hallway. But now, her smile transformed her, as if she'd grown taller, or changed her hair color, or something. Her cheeks popped with dimples, her lips seemed redder and softer against the backdrop of her white teeth. Damn. She was cute.