David Joy Quotes

Hope and faith are loaded guns. Everything I had ever been taught told me things that were too good to be true usually are. It was a silly thought to think that I could get out of these hills. It was a silly thought to think that the life I was born into was something that could be so easily left behind. Some were destined for bigger things, far off places and such. But some of us were glued to this place and we live out what little bit of life we were given until we were just another body buried on uneven ground.

Some souls aren't worth saving, I thought. There're some souls that even the devil wants no part of.

It wasn't here or there that had ever been scary. It was the middle ground, that long desolate space between, that scared the hell out of me.

I wasn't old enough to remember the day Daddy sent her there. The way he told it, she was stealing crank and spent most of her time climbing around the peter tree. So he sent her to this place. Loved her too much to give her nothing, but giving her anything at all squared things so he'd never have to love her again.

I did wonder what happened when we died, though, and I'd wondered about it for most of my life. Thinking that nothing happened, that there was absolutely nothing following all of this pain, seemed just as silly as magic. No, there had to be something.

Empathy's not standing over a hole looking down and saying you understand. Empathy is having been in that hole yourself.

What I'm saying is that it's easy to take the high road so long as there aren't any stakes. But the minute you've got something to lose, a man'll do all sorts of things.

You still can't see it and it's right in front of your eyes. It's the reason we're gathered here. The only reason we're here is because of the ones we loved. That the line that held us.

It's funny how it only takes one person taking the time to show you they care for all that bad shit to not seem so bad for a moment. It's not like the demons go anywhere. What haunts you is still right there when you go back under, but that one gesture from one person can bring you to the surface for a second or two. And for a very long time, all I'd really needed was to come up for air.

Dwayne understood that his brother was not meant for this place, that some people were born too soft to bear the teeth of this world. There was no place for weakness in a world like this. Survival was so often a matter of meanness.

Only the middle ground of this wicked world mattered, the vast gap that stretched between, and those who were born with enough grit to brave it.

I'd never had anyone ask me to let them in. Inside was a place most folks wouldn't have ever wanted to glimpse, much less be a part of, but Maggie had always been banging on the door. Maggie had always been trying her damnedest to take part of the weight off me, and I'd never let her. I couldn't let her then, and I wasn't sure that I could let her now, but the one thing that was for certain was that I'd carried that weight for too long. I'd carried it until I was almost broken, and the only thing that had ever come along and offered to fix any of it, whether she held that power or not, was her.