Brenda Sutton Rose Quotes

Sometimes we need to be knocked down so we can experience the getting up. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

Today, it is the scent of honeysuckle that takes me back in time and lays me down near a barn. I pick a honeysuckle blossom, touch the trumpet to my nose and inhale. With sticky filthy fingers, I pinch the base of its delicate well then lick the drop of nectar. The sweet liquid makes me thirst for more, and I reach for another and another, the same hands that reach again and again for tobacco as I string. I separate honeysuckle blossoms and taste. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

There's secrets hiding inside this six-string just waitin' for somebody to find 'em and turn 'em into music. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

Write your story before it dies one single breath at time. Nobody cares if is the truth as long as it really happened. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

Life can surprise you. You want something with every ounce of blood that flows in your veins, and then one day it's yours. Right there before you. Everything. You break out in a cold sweat with the undeniable realization that what you really want is home. Sometimes finding home is a long time coming. A long journey. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

Dogwood Blues by Brenda Sutton Rose is a masterful work of classic small-town fiction. ~ Janice Daugharty

No matter where I go, I'll never forget home. I can feel its heartbeat a thousand miles away. Home is the place where I grew my wings. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

Are you aware that Jesus Christ can spell? I get so tired of you spelling every slang and cuss word that crosses your mind, as though you are pulling one over on the Lord. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

I write books with words. Numerous words. Words that stomp and stare and crush and collapse and boogie and bang and scream and laugh and manipulate. My books are a storehouse of words that form paragraphs that form chapters that form stories that form thoughts that live on long after you've read the last word. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

Although I wasn't there to bear witness, I imagine Lot's wife scanned the masses for her children. Perhaps she sought out the curves of their mouths and the shapes of their faces, trying to memorize her children, grown now. She looked back as I and any strong, loving mother would have done. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

The truth had lacerated him to the bone, had punctured his heart, and had ripped through his soul. The truth had slain him and tended to his wounds. The truth had hated him and loved him. The truth had opened his eyes to his own faults. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

A part of him died slowly, and the other part died overnight ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

Georgia Author Brenda Sutton Rose captures some of the conflicted and captivating characters of a rapidly changing South. ~ Janisse Ray

As I string, a swift rhythm is played out with my hands, a cadence known only to those who have strung tobacco. To many of the poor workers, the meter and rhythm of stringing tobacco is the only poetry they've ever known. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

Songs. Books. Poetry. Paintings. These things reveal truth. I believe lies and truth are tangled together. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

I seek him in the landscape of home, in the breeze brushing over rows of crops. I seek him in the seasons of planting and harvesting. A rugged man of the earth, he breathed life into this farm. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

If he could do one thing, he could run. He had spent his life running, secrets spitting at his back. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

My mama steps out of her dress
and drops it, an inheritance falling to my feet.
She stands alone: bathed, blooming,
burdened with nothing of this world.
Her body is naked and beautiful,
her wings gray and scorched,
her brown eyes piercing the brown of mine.
I watch her departure, her flapping wings:
She doesn't look back, not even once,
not even to whisper my name ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

At 2:00 sharp on the afternoon of his internment, with his body resting in a casket in the front room of his home, the pallbearers--all bridge players--stuck a deck of cards in Mr. Hampton's cold hands, shut the lid over his head, and played bridge. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

Ask me about my childhood, and I will tell you to walk to the edge of the woods with a choir of crickets chirping from every direction, a hot, humid breeze brushing through your hair, your feet, bare and callused. Stand there, unmoving, and watch the dance of ten thousand fireflies blinking on and off in the darkness. Inhale the scent of cured tobacco, freshly plowed southern soil, burning leaves, and honeysuckle. Swallow the taste of blackberries, picked straight from the bushes, and lick your teeth, the after-taste still sweet in your mouth. Now, stretch out on the ground and relax all your muscles. Watch nature's festival of flickering lights. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

This land pulses with life. It breathes in me; it breathes around me; it breathes in spite of me. When I walk on this land, I am walking on the heartbeat of the past and the future. And that's only one of the reasons I am a farmer. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

With red clay between my toes,
and the sun setting over my head,
the ghost of my mother blows in,
riding on a honeysuckle breeze, oh lord,
riding on a honeysuckle breeze. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

We don't plant trees like we used to. A yard without trees is a yard without a future. It might as well be a cemetery. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

By noon, silence arrives one last time, flowing into every space of her room. And before long, silence swallows sound and color and seconds and equations and entire stanzas of old poetry, leaving new words. The sheets are breathless. The room is bruised.

My mother is still warm. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

As he farmed, hard labor left his hands callused, the sun bleached his hair, his face leathered, and his heart throbbed with music. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

When I was a young, fireflies were as magical to me as a rare southern snow, newborn puppies, and a full moon. Back then, fireflies came in masses, filling the nearby brush and woods with the golden-green glow of something elusive and mysterious. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

These babies ain't just guitars; these babies are living, breathing instruments. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

When his wounds cut too deep for the blues--when he couldn't sing himself out of his own sorrow--when he was too wounded to shimmy his fingers over piano keys--he came to the healing waters of the Alapaha River. And on the river he recounted his sins, confessing to the ancient rhythmic flow of the current. Communion. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

The wind whirls and whistles and strip pink blooms from the mimosas, scatters twigs, broken limbs, pine needles and pine cones across our yard, and robs the pecan trees of a thousand leaves. The storm eventually dies, but the bruised trees continue to weep into the night, still shimmering with dewy leaves when the sun comes up the next morning. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

He takes a draw on a cigarette, blows out a smoky ghost. I reach to catch the phantom in my hands, but it eludes me. I've been trying to catch a ghost for as long as I can remember. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

There are parents who use their small children as weapons. They are weak people. Sick people. And their children are watching them, watching how Mom and Dad use them as weapons. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

When you scratch these guitars, they bleed. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

I'm not made for city streets. My brogans drop soil from the field behind me, each grain of dirt like a seed revealing who I am. My heart belongs in the country. I'm a farmer, and I was shaped in the fields. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

I started to stand, but I neeed to say more to Tracey. "Tracey, I apologize again for calling you 'Arvey' all that time."
Her whole body, already still, stiffened.
"I wouldn't have done it if I had known your real name."
One hand slipped up under her hair, as if swiping a tear.
"I hope you never do anything like the picture again because it caused a lot of trouble, but there's something important I want you to know."
She slowly raised her head and faxed me with damp, red eyes.
Memory took me back to that night Grandma explained why she was so happy in spite of the horrors she had survived. I wanted to do what Grandma had done – leave the bad times behind so I could enjoy the good times. I wanted to close the door on this whole drama.
"Tracey, I forgive you. ~ Brenda Vicars

I watched our reflection in the mirror. I loved that reflection. ~ Alyssa Rose Ivy

I love cocktails. My specialty drink is a gimlet with a little egg white in it so it gets frothy. I really like rose water - sometimes I'll add it to champagne. ~ Christina Hendricks

Smoke rose from the barrel of the gun like a serpent crawling up from its wicker basket ~ Andrew Lennon

A secret sweeter than the soul can whisper, I shall love you forever. ~ Brenda J. Webb

I must go
the aunts will be worried. Guy, I don't know if we will meet again, but
" Her voice broke and she tried again. "Sometimes, when you're alone and you look up at
" Once more, she had to stop. Then she managed, "If I cannot be anything else ... could I be your Star Sister? Could I at least be that?"
Guy dug his nails into his palms. Everything in him rose in protest at the fey, romantic conceit. He did not want her in the heavens, linked to him by some celestial whimsy, but here and now in the flesh and after the death of the flesh, her hand in his as they rose from graves like these when the last trump sounded.
"Yes," he managed to say. "You can be my Star Sister. You can at least be that. ~ Eva Ibbotson

Another low moan rose from the grass. "That was a good shot," Mother said, nodding toward it.
"Not good enough."
Mother shrugged. "It was dark." She rose and stretched out her stiff body, a sign that she truly felt safe. "You'll get better."
Another cry. Mother licked her finger, tested the wind, and fired once into the night.
Silence fell. ~ Mindy McGinnis

Pulling her wrist from his mouth was as hard as turning from the gates of paradise. She fell back off the bed and sat down hard on the tile floor. The vampire snarled and rose to a crouch, silhouetted by the last rays of the setting sun. Her blood stained his lips and his chin. "What the hell were you doing?" Cat's mouth fell open. "What. I mean." He wiped the blood off his chin with his fingers and regarded it in fascination and disgust. "Seriously, woman. What is wrong with you? Haven't you ever heard of consent?" She ~ Max Gladstone

Never be satisfied with a first draft. In fact, never be satisfied with your own stuff at all, until you're certain it's as good as your finite powers can enable it to be. ~ Rose Tremain

You have an interesting set of morals," he observed. "Breaking out of jail is okay. But steal a car, and you sound totally outraged. ~ Richelle Mead

A rose will wilt in short time, but my garden is more vivacious for having one in it. Love is even more fragrant, but often just as fragile and fleeting, but I eagerly accept the joy of it now, knowing the cost is the pain of loss later. ~ Jarod Kintz

I remember draft night, I shook David Stern's hand while rocking a red suit with white pinstripes and red gators I've always been a trendsetter. ~ Jalen Rose

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. ~ Gertrude Stein

Your aunt Rose is dying," Petranilla said as soon as he was close. "May God bless her soul. Mother Cecilia told me." "You look shocked - but you know how ill she is." "It's not Aunt Rose. I've had other bad news." He swallowed. "I can't go to Oxford. ~ Ken Follett

There are no accidents of fate. Every act has a reaction through lives, through time. Déjà vu and coincidence are God tapping you on the shoulder, telling you to pay attention, showing you that you are walking in the footprint of your own reincarnation. ~ M.J. Rose

Sometimes when Rose was reading, she would catch a whiff of the musty smell of her book. She put her nose down in the fold and inhaled deeply so that wonderful smell, the smell of adventure in faraway lands, would fill her up. She rubbed her hand across the pages to feel the velvety surface of the paper. When she closed her eyes, her fingertips could even feel the words that were printed there, each letter raised just a little, almost like the special language that her blind aunt Mary could read.
To Rose, a book was as real and alive as if it breathed and walked and spoke. ~ Roger Lea MacBride

It isn't porn. It's erotic romance. There is a huge difference. Amber Rose writes hot love stories. And if you can't handle it, then I don't care. I love her books, and I wish I had known who she was when I met her. Erotic romance helped me figure out what I wanted." Jake ~ Lexi Blake

I told you I wouldn't forget you...and as I'm sure you remember, the black rose is you. ~ Karen E. Taylor

Buy your fair-trade coffee beans by all means, but don't assume fair-trade principles govern the conditions of the men who fetch it to you. You would be mistaken. ~ Rose George

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME WILL SMELL AS SWEET. BUT IT DOES NOT FOLLOW THAT WHATEVER WE CHOOSE TO CALL A ROSE WILL POSSESS THE ROSE'S FRAGRANCE. ~ B. B. Warfield

What greater aspiration and challenge are there for a mother than the hope of raising a great son or daughter? ~ Rose Kennedy

Sometimes the most worthwhile things are right in front of our eyes. We just make them hard because we think that gives them more value. ~ Karen Rose

When I speak in Christian terms or Buddhist terms I'm simply selecting for the moment a dialect. Christian words for me represent the comforting vocabulary of the place I came from hometown voices saying more than the language itself can convey about how welcome and safe I am what the expectations are and where to find food. Buddhist words come from another dialect from the people over the mountain. I've become pretty fluent in Buddhist it helps me to see my home country differently but it will never be speech I can feel completely at home in. ~ Mary Rose O'Reilley

Okay, Fine. I'm glad you didn't drown. Sort of. Good luck with whatever it is you're doing out here. ~ Frankie Rose

Oh! snatched away in beauty's bloom,
On thee shall press no ponderous tomb;
But on thy turf shall roses rear
Their leaves, the earliest of the year. ~ Lord Byron

To the celestial Rose, who drew me into her lovely orbit. With love and gratitude, Theo. ~ Isabel Wolff

Our quilts were more than useful, they had the faint sentimentality of a pressed flower. And no more beauty. We did not value them for their appearance, but for the memories in them, for their good wearing qualities and the thrift they represented. ~ Rose Wilder Lane

Hey, it's your chance... climb the balcony... give me a plastic rose... and we'll pretend that we're actually beautiful people. ~ Stephen Karam

A wave formed, swelling around Ariel's body. It lifted her up higher and higher- or maybe she herself was growing: it was hard to tell. She held the trident aloft. Storm clouds raced to her from all directions like a lost school of cichlid babies flicking to their father's mouth for protection. Lightning coursed through the sky and danced between the trident's tines.
Ariel sang a song of rage.
Notes rose and fell discordantly, her voice screeching at times like a banshee from the far north.
She sang, and the wind sang with her. It whipped her hair out of its braids and pulled tresses into tentacles that billowed around her head. She sang of the unfairness of Eric's fate and her own, of her father's torture as a polyp, even of Scuttle's mortal life, slowly but visibly slipping away.
Mostly she sang about Ursula.
She sang about everyone whose lives had been touched and destroyed by evil like coral being killed and bleached, like dead spots in the ocean from algae blooms, like scale rot. She sang about what she would do to anyone who threatened those she loved and protected.
And then, with her final note, she made a quick thrust as if to throw the trident toward the boats in the bay, pulling it back at the last moment.
A clap louder than thunder echoed across the ocean. A wave even larger than the one she rode roared up from the depths of the open sea. It smashed through and around her, leaving her hair and body white with foam. She grinned fie ~ Liz Braswell

I went from being just a kid to all of a sudden not being able to walk a block without a man waggling his tongue through his fingers, which is disgusting. I mean, I was 13 and suddenly I'm trying to see myself through the eyes of men, trying to figure out why I'm getting this reaction from them versus just being able to walk through the world whole. ~ Rose McGowan

My dad gave me threepence to pay the fine but I spent it on a Wagon Wheel ~ Brenda Blethyn

It wasn't really touching to be young; it was touching not to be young, because you had less of life left. Touching to be thirty; more touching to be forty; tragic to be fifty; and heartbreaking to be sixty. As to seventy, as to eighty, one would feel as one did during the last dance of a ball, tired but fey in the paling dawn, desperately making the most of each bar of music before one went home to bed. ~ Rose Macaulay

The preacher rose high on his elbow. "Law changes," he said, "but 'got to's' go on. You got the right to do what you got to do. ~ John Steinbeck

I fought a killer and didn't even smudge my makeup. ~ Rose Pressey

I like buying iTunes. It's instant. ~ Caitlin Rose