Amanda Kyle Williams Quotes

.. I needed to hire someone to manage all this, but I dreaded it. It's not like you just hire one person. You hire their family and their problems, their illnesses and financial issues and weird habits and friends. You're forced to share a bathroom with them. It's like sleeping with someone without the benefits.

Damn fool," Mother whispered, and covered her face with her hands. "It's not enough that he spells out Leon on the roof every year in Christmas lights. Now this!"
My father was dyslexic but would not admit it.

Hey." I twisted my wrist free. "I'm just the messenger here, pal. You knew this was coming. Your pastor made the arrangements. I don't think a big ole scene in church is going to help your case."
"You know why that bitch lawyer and the pastor wanted us to meet in church?" LaBreque asked. "So I wouldn't be tempted to cut your Chink ass into little pieces and stuff you in the fucking sewer."
Oh boy.
That was my morning. Maybe later I could poke myself in the eye three or four hundred times just for fun.

Sometimes you only get one chance at something. Sometimes that's a good thing too. When that door slams shut on the thing you couldn't live without, what happens next is when the read education begins. You have to figure out how to make some peace with it all, how to have an interior life you can live with. Digging down deep is really never a bad thing in the end, but it will flat-out kick your ass while it's happening.

You learn to forgive (the South) for its narrow mind and growing pains because it has a huge heart. You forgive the stifling summers because the spring is lush and pastel sprinkled, because winter is merciful and brief, because corn bread and sweet tea and fried chicken are every bit as vital to a Sunday as getting dressed up for church, and because any southerner worth their salt says please and thank you. It's soft air and summer vines, pine woods and fat homegrown tomatoes. It's pulling the fruit right off a peach tree and letting the juice run down your chin. It's a closeted and profound appreciation for our neighbors in Alabama who bear the brunt of the Bubba jokes. The South gets in your blood and nose and skin bone-deep. I am less a part of the South than it is part of me. It's a romantic notion, being overcome by geography. But we are all a little starry-eyed down here. We're Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara and Rosa Parks all at once.