Appalachian Fiction Quotes

Nothing else in the whole wide world matters as much as avenging your sister. ~ Jason Jack Miller

Though the trials of life are never easy, someone to stand with you and help you with your burdens is one of the true essences of living. It is well that two should join together to face life as friends as well as lovers. ~ Micheal Rivers

Preston Black couldn't sleep the whole night through, Preston Black couldn't sleep the whole night through. He'd lay in bed 'til the morning came, but the devil'd visit him just the same. Preston Black couldn't sleep the whole night through. ~ Jason Jack Miller

You are not a handgun. More like a pellet gun. Maybe even a slingshot. ~ Jason Jack Miller

The best thing a father can do for his son is love his mother. ~ Adriana Trigiani

They travel through the heartland, past cold factories and drifty towns, to the old, old mountains slumbering east of Tennessee. ~ Sarah Sullivan

May your glass always be full, may there always be a roof over your head, and may you dirty sinners be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you're dead. ~ Jason Jack Miller

Yeah, but a hellbender never dies. You ever see a dead one? ~ Jason Jack Miller

I'm sure you have drawers overflowing with panties the ladies throw at the stage. We saw you guys play down at Mon Brewing a few times. Way to keep the Nineties alive. ~ Jason Jack Miller

We're all Hitler inside. We're all Christ inside. I'm not keen on the idea, but it's true, isn't it? We've all got a little bit of the devil in us. ~ Jason Jack Miller

Life is too short to be mad for too long. ~ Judith L. Harper

That's what we both hate about fiction, or at least crappy fiction - it purports to provide occasions for thinking through complex issues, but really it has predetermined the positions, stuffed a narrative full of false choices, and hooked you on them, rendering you less able to see out, to get out. ~ Maggie Nelson

Terrible drought, crops dead, sheep dying. Spring dried up. No water. The Hopi, and the Christian, maybe the Moslem, they pray for rain. The Navajo has the proper ceremony done to restore himself to harmony with the drought. You see what I mean. The system is designed to recognize what's beyond human power to change, and then to change the human's attitude to be content with the inevitable. - Tony Hillerman, Sacred Clowns, 1993 ~ Tony Hillerman

Do steers make treaties with meat packers? ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Bosch had left Nigeria with his infamous Butcher Boys - assorted sizes, shapes and colors, but all killers for a price - when his scheme to take over a native village backfired. He had figured on cleaning up by selling the village girls in the Congo but found himself dodging spears, knives and related items of cutlery instead. ~ Walter Kaylin

I'm a fiction writer not by choice, but by necessity. It's the only way I can say what I want without having to admit it's the truth. ~ Jack Tate

Most fiction comes from your experience. ~ Susan Minot

Not tingling as much as a rapid-burning desire and longing. I want him to f**k me. Right here. Right now. ~ J.P. Nicholas

This is New York, babe. Be ready to expect anything. ~ Faith Sullivan

Never run upstairs when someone's chasing you. Don't try to quick-draw a man who already has his gun out. Never light a match in the dark in a strange building. Half of staying safe is just keeping your head and being prudent. ~ Mark Zero

The thing that fiction can do is look from the inside out rather than from the outside in. Even memoir leaves me somewhat frustrated. I think now we need a poet to uncover what isn't on the surface. ~ Alice McDermott

A story is a wedding in which we listeners are the groom watching the bride coming up the aisle. It is together, in an act of imaginary consummation, that the story is born. This act wholly involves us, as any marriage would, and just as no marriage is exactly the same as another, so each of us interprets a story differently, feels for it differently. A story calls upon us ... as individuals-and we like that. Stories benefit the human mind. ~ Yann Martel

We will be one step down from the Creator," she said, her olive-hued face tightening into an expression that she considered dramatic. "Imagining a world and then making it. ~ Walter Mosley

Maybe they seeded life on Earth millions of years ago, and now they're here to punish us for turning out to be such a lame species and inventing reality TV and shit? ~ Ernest Cline

You are a coward. You don't have power over me anymore. I am free from your lies. I am free from your watered-down poison venom - you can bite me, but it will not affect me anymore. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

You know-portraits are odd things." "How do you figure?" I asked. "Well at the time, that portrait told the whole story. It told the truth. We were a family-a happy family. Now that same portrait just looks like a lie. ~ Brian Joyce

She's shed her skins
and plasma jeans, gets around in 2K
retro gear like the frock she wears today;
a loose, white elegy to what's been lost.
Already she's flowing back into herself
the way a river flows to fill a creek bed.
But some hard layer has washed away
and left her softer, more interested. ~ Lisa Jacobson

Hanna reached for Margaret's hand, knowing nothing she could say would bring comfort. Margaret would never see her grandmother again. Nor would Hanna see her Oma, who had wept when Hanna boarded the ship for America, waving goodbye for the last time. Only the elderly and frail were left behind. And letters from home were not the same as a warm laugh or a cup of tea shared on a cold day. ~ Meredith Jaeger

After running her eyes over pulsing LEDs on the suspension unit, Samantha glanced through a small port at Claire Hyndman's limp body. She looked expectantly at Mih Valanson, one of her senior technicians. "Well? How's it going? Are you succeeding?"
Valanson looked uncomfortable.
"Well?"
"I shouldn't be doing this. Brain-stripping is illegal."
"I do wish you wouldn't call it that," Samantha scolded.
After following Samantha's gaze and looking at Claire Hyndman's pale face, Valanson secretly hoped his efforts would be in vain. ~ Andrew R. Williams

With one perfect kiss on one perfect English summer afternoon, we understand the meaning of all the colors of every rainbow, forevermore. ~ Hunter S. Jones

The term 'Erotic Fiction' is interesting to me. The 'Fiction' part. Cuz right now somewhere in the world it's happening just as it's written. ~ Gregor Collins

When the world uncovers some dark disguise,
Embrace the darkness with averted eyes. ~ Thomas Ligotti

I read everywhere. I read every day. I read on the couch with my dog in the afternoon and at night. I try to read at least two to three hours a day. I read only fiction. ~ R.L. Stine

I was looking to do something non-fiction because I had done a strip, 'My Mom Was a Schizophrenic.' I really enjoyed the process of doing that strip, despite its subject matter. To do it I'd had to do a lot of research and reading and I figured I'd like to do that again. ~ Chester Brown

My wisdom is for my friends, my folly for myself. ~ Frederick Marryat

The first teacher, the first kiss, and the first crime. I've always been hindered by my dislike for repetition. The first time you do anything, it's creative, but from then on it's just work. ~ Elizaveta Mikhailichenko

People tend to think of their lives as having a dramatic arc, because they read too much fiction. ~ Will Self

I'd love to do a movie where the monster is human, where the issue is not otherworldly, or horror or science fiction. ~ J.J. Abrams

Havens turned again.
Someone else passed between the trucks.
That someone walked with less purpose than the other workers near the stalls. To Havens this meant a surveillance asset was on him and it probably was not an assassination attempt. It eased him back into relative comfort for just a moment or two more. ~ J.T. Patten

A tiny adjustment, but a tasty one. Poof! And somewhere in the back of their minds the godlike thought glimmers. ~ Geoffrey Wood

She thinks, briefly, that she has never felt so lonely in her life. ~ Jojo Moyes

Your role out there is to give something back, guide the way forward... Maybe, just maybe if you spent a little less time looking out for yourself and a little more time thinking about... no, scratch that, just thinking would be a start. ~ Trevor Alan Foris

Nonfiction speaks to the head. Fiction speaks to the heart. Poetry speaks to the soul. It's the essence of beauty. The essence of pain. It pleases the eye and the ear. ~ Ellen Hopkins

Ida was a natural historian who knew how to throw in enough fiction to keep up dramtic tension. And she was replete with details, like a big fat colorful nineteenth-century historical novel, inching forward slowly ... Ida's narrative line, like her waistline, was ample. ~ Marissa Piesman

Aspirations are useless, because to aspire, is to reach. Dream, they say, but not too big. Laugh, they say, but not too loudly. Love, they say, but not too hard. ~ Logan Keys

I would cry if I could, but instead I just feel my heart rip apart. ~ Siobhan Davis

No, she's been killing me with kindness." She pointed her finger in his face. "There's a difference, and if you didn't have her on a pedestal, you could tell the difference. ~ Yawatta Hosby

[Property] is a brilliant, chillingly revelatory piece of fiction, a work of craft, economy and such good merciless observation-one of those rare, crucial novels illuminating a history we think we know and understand so that after we've read it we'll never forget its truths. ~ Ali Smith

I wasn't that good you know. What I was was a guy who could write a little, publishing in magazines surrounded by people who couldn't write at all. So I looked pretty good. But I never thought I was that good at all. All that I thought was that I tried to tell the truth. ~ Cornell Woolrich

Well, I'll tell yer now, it's going t' be even better for talkin' t' me! Get your arse down tut station. I'd gor meself, but I'm sending you as a proxy. Sort it out at Oxford Street for me, will yer, eh?They're not doin' the bloody figures, an' I for one want to know what the eck's goin' on! You'll be writin' me a full report. And if they're pissing about, sack 'em, right? Get your arse on the next bloody train, eh! I want you there as soon as possible. Get yourself checked in tut hotel when you get there. You can phone that man, Bart is it, whatsisname, and let 'im knor, eh?.....What d'yer say? You'll do it for me? Grand! Get your arse down that station, now! The phone clicked off ~ Suzy Davies

Forcing the muse to let thoughts flow; equals to pushing a child, into labor. ~ Aniruddha Sastikar

That was a day that taught me the meaning of abject failure. ~ Walter Moers

And now, we have no option. We can't say 'maybe' 'it's possible' 'it looks very probable ... ' No way! We have to say this is what the Bible teaches! This is fact! May 21, 2011 is the day of the Rapture, it is the day that Judgment Day begins ... ~ Harold Camping

For anyone with a library in their head and love in their heart, ~ Kevin Ansbro

A 21st century poet is a woman who can speak her mind and stand upright like a mountain with her convictions, but can adapt like water in an ever changing season without losing her genuine elements. ~ Roseville Nidea