County Down Quotes

Down in the kitchen, I open the refrigerator. There is nothing there but the prize steer of the county fair, rearranged in neat and mysterious packages. Daily, the cook pushes her hand into the cold. The result in uncertain. A gristly Ouija. It could be pot roast or brisket, eye of the round or sirloin tip. The steer has invaded their lives. He is everywhere. There is no room for the sisters' diet-cola or for their underwear on sizzling mornings. They have been eating him for weeks. ~ Joy Williams

The news just came in from the County of Keck That a very small bug by the name of Van Vleck Is yawning so wide you can look down his neck. This may not seem very important, I know, but it Is, so I'm bothering telling you so. ~ Dr. Seuss

I run three to four times a week. I go down to Orange County in California and I run all the time ... all the time. You see the oceans, the trees. I like running in hot weather. I like to sweat and get all those toxins out of my system. I thoroughly enjoy it. ~ Sugar Ray Leonard

That was his biggest regret. He loved playing for a
living, loved hearing his songs on the radio, loved being on a stage and the road, but some days, he wouldn't have minded going home every night to a sweet wife and a couple babies and fried chicken on the table. That was what Lindsey had taken from him. He'd fallen hard. He'd seen what his momma must've felt for his daddy, he'd felt his world crack right down the middle when the girl who had
become his everything ripped his heart out of his chest. ~ Jamie Farrell

But, also, before I even go on the Medicare prescription drug debate, I always tell the folks in rural Illinois, and I represent 30 counties south of Springfield down to Indiana and Kentucky, that in this bill is the best rural package for hospitals ever passed. ~ John Shimkus

She had been like a roller coaster aficionado for whom tame county fair roller coasters were as good as the ones that spun you upside down and dropped you so fast your eyes turned red. It was all just a ride. ~ Peter Straub

What was shocking were the rewards my father's cousins had gathered in the intervening couple of decades. They farmed now on thousands of acres, not hundreds. They drove fancy pickup trucks, owned lakefront property and second homes. A simple Internet search offered the truth of where their riches had come from: good ol' Uncle Sam. Recently I clicked again on a database of farm subsidy payments, and found that five of my father's first cousins had been paid, all told, $3 million between 1995 and 2005 - and that on top of whatever they'd earned outright for the sale of their corn and soybeans. They worked hard, certainly. They'd saved and scrimped through the lean years. They were good and honorable yeoman, and now they'd come through to their great reward: a prime place at the trough of the welfare state. All that corn syrup guzzled down the gullets of America's overweight children, all that beef inefficiently fattened on cheap feed, all that ethanol being distilled in heartland refineries: all of it underwritten by as wasteful a government program as now exists this side of the defense industry. In the last ten years, the federal government has paid $131 million in subsidies and disaster insurance in just the county [in Minnesota] where I grew up. Corn is subsidized to keep it cheap, and the subsidies encourage overproduction, which encourages a scramble for ever more ways to use corn, and thus bigger subsidies - the perfect feedback loop of government welfare. ~ Philip Connors

In South Texas I saw three interesting things. The first was a tiny girl, maybe ten years old, driving in a 1965 Cadillac. She wasn't going very fast, because I passed her, but still she was cruising right along, with her head tilted back and her mouth open and her little hands gripping the wheel.

Then I saw an old man walking up the median strip pulling a wooden cross behind him. It was mounted on something like a golf cart with two spoked wheels. I slowed down to read the hand-lettered sign on his chest.

JACKSONVILLE
FLA OR BUST

I had never been to Jacksonville but I knew it was the home of the Gator Bowl and I had heard it was a boom town, taking in an entire county or some such thing. It seemed an odd destination for a religious pilgrim. Penance maybe for some terrible sin, or some bargain he had worked out with God, or maybe just a crazed hiker. I waved and called out to him, wishing him luck, but he was intent on his marching and had no time for idle greetings. His step was brisk and I was convinced he wouldn't bust.

The third interesting thing was a convoy of stake-bed trucks all piled high with loose watermelons and cantaloupes. I was amazed. I couldn't believe that the bottom ones weren't crushed under all that weight, exploding and spraying hazardous melon juice onto the highway. One of nature's tricks with curved surfaces. Topology! I had never made it that far in mathematics and engineering studies, and I knew no ~ Charles Portis

Eat your cadence
Drip my head down your chin
It's so much more comfortable
To watch the sun fall into the ocean
Orange County license plates
Say things that make no sense
You are beautiful projected against purple
You are everything wrapped in orange
Yeah when you talk you lick my heart
I taste you when I breathe
The moon is a fingernail on the floor
Your shadow goes to sleep with mine
I love you forever and ever and
Ever ~ Joshua Espinoza

The Wise County Bookmobile is one of the most beautiful sights in the world to me. When I see it lumbering down the mountain road like a tank ... I flag it down like an old friend. I've waited on this corner every Friday since I can remember. The Bookmobile is just a government truck, but to me it's a glittering royal coach delivering stories and knowledge and life itself. I even love the smell of books. People have often told me that one of their strongest childhood memories is the scent of their grandmother's house. I never knew my grandmothers, but I could always count on the Bookmobile. ~ Adriana Trigiani

He'd been down at the Cass County Library, reading...Win danced a jig he thought that was so funny...about this cat Henry David Thoreau, which he pronounced Toe-Row. He read about his life and read some of his writings and this cat really had his shit together...Toe-Row knew better than anybody that Life is a Big Fat Asshole with everybody trying to Stick It To You when they get half the chance. ~ Joe Eszterhas

Oh no, honey. Lots of women go through it early. Why, there was this woman over in Georgia who was only thirty-six-years-old and one day she got in her car and drove right up the stairs to the county courthouse, rolled down her window, and tossed her mother's head that she had just chopped off in her kitchen at a State policeman and hollered, "Here! This is what you wanted," and drove right back down the courthouse stairs. Now that's what an early menopause will do for you if you're not careful. ~ Fannie Flagg

Anney makes the best gravy in the county, the sweetest biscuits, and puts just enough vinegar in those greens. Glenn nodded, though the truth was he'd never had much of a taste for greens, and his well-educated mama had always told him that gravy was bad for the heart. So he was not ready for the moment when Mama pushed her short blond hair back and set that big plate of hot food down in front of his open hands. Glenn took a bite of gristly meat and gravy, and it melted between his teeth. The greens were salt sweet and fat rich. His tongue sang to his throat; his neck went loose, and his hair fell across his face. It was like sex, that food, too good to waste on the middle of the day and a roomful of men too tired to taste. He chewed, swallowed began to come alive himself. He began to feel for the first time like one of the boys, a grown man accepted by the notorious and dangerous Earle Boatwright, staring across the counter at one of the prettiest woman he'd ever seen. His face went hot, and he took a big drink of ice tea to cool himself. ~ Dorothy Allison

Out of the clouds I hear a faint bark, as of a faraway dog. It is strange how the world cocks its ear to that sound, wondering. Soon it is louder: the honk of geese, invisible, but coming on.
The flock emerges from the low clouds, a tattered banner of birds, dipping and rising, blown up and blown down, blown together and blown apart, but advancing, the wind wrestling lovingly with each winnowing wing. When the flock is a blur in the far sky I hear the last honk, sounding taps for summer.
It is warm behind the driftwood now, for the wind has gone with the geese. So would I
if I were the wind. ~ Aldo Leopold

Good God, with a bounty
Look down on Marion County,
For the soil is so pore, and so awful rooty, too,
I don't know what to God the pore folks gonna do. ~ Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Poppy Pink is a unicorn, but not just any unicorn. She is a member of the Pinkerton Manor family of unicorns.
She was indeed a vision as she stepped from her transport.
Poppy Pink is pink all over, but her mane and tail are the purest white and so soft and silky. Her hooves are silver and look like dancing shoes, and they match her sparkling, silver, spiralled horn.
'Oh Poppy,' gasped Oona. 'You look beautiful.'
'I know I do Oona. I suppose you don't look too bad either… for a dragon.'
Poppy Pink was a snob, and there wasn't anyone, unicorn or dragon, who was better than her. Well, she was a third generation Pinkerton Manor unicorn, and Pinkerton Manor was only the biggest Manor House in the county.
How could anyone possibly be better?
Poppy Pink looked down at her feet. They were very muddy.
'Ugh, look at my beautiful, shiny, hooves Oona,' whined Poppy Pink. 'We don't have mud at Pinkerton Manor, even when it rains.'
Poor Oona Orange-Blackspot looked downhearted. 'So sorry Poppy. I wish it hadn't rained for your visit.'
'So do I,' sniffed Poppy Pink. 'I find this weather very tiresome. It never rains enough to cause mud at Pinkerton Manor. ~ Ann Perry

The game jostled back and forth, and then came the final inning. Some player named Casey came to bat, like his teammates, looking like a rock. Lightning ripped through the air as rain came down in sheets. The scoreboard said the horses were beating the rocks by two points, but there were two men on base. If Casey hit a homerun, the rocks would beat the horses. If not, too bad for the rocks.
This man, Ben, and the two people with him looked horrified as this Casey came to bat. They had red shirts with horses painted on them. They jumped up and down for joy when they saw the final pitch, and Casey sulking back to the dugout. He had struck out. After the game, the four hiked back to a very small car. ~ Molly Maguire McGill

When I was tiny, the county fair came through town. Our parents took us, and got tickets for the rides, even though I was scared to death of all of them. Edward was the one who convinced me to go on the merry-go-round. He put me up on one of the wooden horses and he told me the horse was magic, and might turn real right underneath me, but only if I didn't look down. So I didn't. I stared out at the pinwheeling crowd and searched for him. Even when I started to get dizzy or thought I might throw up, the circle would come around again and there he was. After a while, I stopped thinking about the horse being magic, or even how terrified I was, and instead, I made a game out of finding Edward.
I think that's what family feels like. A ride that takes you back to the same place over and over. ~ Jodi Picoult

Speaking of Vaughan, his claim in the Daily Telegraph last week that the story of a senior county pro being offered money to fix domestic matches was 'the tip of the iceberg' did not go down well with one former England captain contacted by the Top Spin. 'I played the game for almost 20 years,' he seethed, 'and I don't know a single player who has been offered money, either for information or to fix a game. To say it's the tip of the iceberg is absolute rubbish.'
The fact that the player in question had just registered a mediocre Stableford score of 20 playing off a handicap of 14 had nothing to do, I was assured, with his foul mood. ~ Lawrence Booth

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay"
"Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away. ~ John Denver

When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy.

The way I liked best was letting go a poisonous spider in his bed. It would bite him and he'd be dead and swollen up and I would shudder to find him so. Of course I would call the rescue squad and tell them to come quick something's the matter with my daddy. When they come in the house I'm all in a state of shock and just don't know how to act what with two colored boys heaving my dead daddy onto a roller cot. I just stand in the door and look like I'm shaking all over.

But I did not kill my daddy. He drank his own self to death the year after the County moved me out. I heard how they found him shut up in the house dead and everything. Next thing I know he's in the ground and the house is rented out to a family of four.

All I did was wish him dead real hard every now and then. All I can say for a fact that I am better off now than when he was alive. ~ Kaye Gibbons

There was, apparently, a nuclear reactor at a place called Indian Point, just thirty miles away in Westchester County. If something bad happened there, we were constantly being informed, the 'radioactive debris', whatever this might be, was liable to rain down on us. (Indian Point: the earliest, most incurable apprehensions stirred in its very name.) Then there was the question of dirty bombs. Apparently any fool could build a dirty bomb and explode it in Manhattan. How likely was this? Nobody knew. Very little about anything seemed intelligible or certain, and New York itself - that ideal source of the metropolitan diversion that serves as a response to the largest futilities - took on a fearsome, monstrous nature whose reality might have befuddled Plato himself. We were trying, as I irreverently analysed it, to avoid what might be termed a historic mistake. We were trying to understand, that is, whether we were in a pre-apocalyptic situation, like the European Jews in the thirties or the last citizens of Pompeii, or whether our situation was merely near-apocalyptic, like that of the Cold War inhabitants of New York, London, Washington and, for that matter, Moscow. In my anxiety I phoned Rachel's father, Charles Bolton, and asked him how he'd dealt with the threat of nuclear annihilation. I wanted to believe that this episode of history, like those old cataclysms that deposit a geologically telling layer of dust on the floors of seas, had sooted its survivors with special in ~ Joseph O'Neill

Emily was lucky in many ways. She was lucky in the house she lived in, a house with three balconies, a cupola, banisters just right for sliding down, and the second bathtub in Yamhill County. ~ Beverly Cleary

When Maricopa County Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio cracked down on illegal immigration without getting permission from Obama, they threatened to revoke his 287(g) status. When Sheriff Joe refused to balk, they filed suit against him with a frivolous civil rights claim. ~ Russell Pearce

The sight of Fos and Opal coming down the street together absolutely tickled him. The idea of two such strangely unremarkable yet lovable people could have found and met each other reaffirmed his waning faith in anything remotely optimistic about mankind and seemed to be a more convincing proof than all the gospel shit flown from the pulpits of Knox County that life could, in fact, distribute happy endings. ~ Marianne Wiggins

I came down to Orange because I sold the Smothers Brothers a song called 'Chocolate,' and that gave me enough money to move down here. I was washing windows down in Orange County when they called me up and said they wanted me to do their TV show. ~ Pat Paulsen

I kept driving for a while, then stopped on the side of the road. Shining my brights on the road in front of me, I watched out for Leatherface while dialing Marlboro Man on my car phone. My pulse was rapid out of sheer terror and embarrassment; my face was hot. Lost and helpless on a county road the same night I'd emotionally decompensated in his kitchen--this was not exactly the image I was dying to project to this new man in my life. But I had no other option, short of continuing to drive aimlessly down one generic road after another or parking on the side of the road and going to sleep, which really wasn't an option at all, considering Norman Bates was likely wandering around the area. With Ted Bundy. And Charles Manson. And Grendel.
Marlboro Man answered, "Hello?" He must have been almost asleep.
"Um…um…hi," I said, squinting in shame.
"Hey there," he replied.
"This is Ree," I said. I just wanted to make sure he knew.
"Yeah…I know," he said.
"Um, funniest thing happened," I continued, my hands in a death grip on the steering wheel. "Seems I got a little turned around and I'm kinda sorta maybe perhaps a little tiny bit lost."
He chuckled. "Where are you?"
"Um, well, that's just it," I replied, looking around the utter darkness for any ounce of remaining pride. "I don't really know."
Marlboro Man assumed control, telling me to drive until I found an intersection, then read him the numbers on the small green county road sign, numb ~ Ree Drummond

Slave owner Edmund Plowden, who lived in what is now St. Mary's County, Maryland, owned sixty-four slaves and rented out three men - Gerard, Tony, and Jack - to work at the Capitol. Although Plowden did not lift a single stone or cut down a single tree, he made $15 a month off of the Capitol construction. He was only required to provide his slaves with a blanket. ~ Jesse J. Holland

a county with a unique history of people starving and mortifying themselves for higher causes and principles, a political reflex that has twitched steadily down the years and seems rooted in some aggravated sense of sinfulness because, like no other county it is blistered with shrines and grottoes and prayer houses and hermitages just as it is crossed with pilgrim paths and penitential ways ~ Mike McCormack

I live in two worlds. One is a world of books. I've been a resident of Faulkner's Yoknapatowpha County, hunted the white whale aboard the Pequod, fought alongside Napoleon, sailed a raft with Huck and Jim, committed absurdities with Ignatius J. Reilly, rode a sad train with Anna Karenina, and strolled down Swann's Way. ~ Rory Gilmore

Doc fell in to a car convoy, moving slowly, single lane through the fog. He figured if he missed the Gordita Beach exit, he'd take the first one whose sign he could read and work his way back on surface streets. He knew that at Rosecrans, the freeway began to dogleg east, and at some point, Hawthorne Boulevard or Artesia,he'd lose the fog, unless it was spreading tonight, and settled in region wide... Maybe then it would stay this way for days, maybe he'd have to just keep driving, down past Long Beach, down through Orange County, and San Diego and across a border where nobody could
tell anymore in the fog who was Mexican, who was Anglo, who was anybody. Then again, he might run out of gas before that happened, and have to leave the caravan, and pull over on the shoulder, and wait. For whatever would happen. For a forgotten joint to
materialize in his pocket. For the CHP to come by and choose not to hassle him. For a restless blonde in a Stingray to stop and offer him a ride. For the fog to burn off, and for something else this time, somehow, to be there instead. ~ Thomas Pynchon

For a moment people set down their glasses in county clubs and speak-easies and thought of their old best dreams. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

I knew I used food to cope with emotions, but just knowing it wasn't enough to completely stop it. That's why I created the twenty-second rule: Before letting myself rip into a bag of junk food, I forced myself to sit down and county to twenty. Slowly. During those twenty seconds I made myself answer a very simple question: What was really bothering me? Almost every single time, I came up with the answer before the twenty seconds were up. The next question was: What can I do right this minute to help fix it? Do I need to call someone to sort out a misunderstanding? Do I need to get paperwork done? Do I need to run overdue errands? . . .By the time I came up with something that I could do right at that moment my urge to eat had subsided and I was tacking the underlying problem. ~ Monica Seles

I had long since managed a degree of detachment when dealing with photographs from homicide cases. They no longer upset me as they once did, although I make it a point not to dwell on them. By the time I stood in Shirley Lewis's office, I had seen thousands of body pictures. I had seen pictures of Kathy Devine and Brenda Baker in Thurston County, but that was months before it was known there was a "Ted." Of course, there were no bodies to photograph in the other Washington cases, and I had had no access to Colorado or Utah pictures. Now, I was staring down at huge color photographs of the damage done to girls young enough to be my daughters - at pictures of damage alleged to be the handiwork of a man I thought I knew. That man who only minutes before had smiled the same old grin at me, and shrugged as if to say, "I have no part of this." It hit me with a terrible sickening wave. I ran to the ladies' room and threw up. ~ Ann Rule

Well, Edwin?" Jane asked anxiously. "Would he hurt her?"
Blakeborough squeezed Jane's shoulder, then left his hand resting there. That seemed remarkably intimate for a man who supposedly had only a platonic-sounding "arrangement" with her.
Dom tamped down his urge to go knock the earl's hand from here into the next county. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Down in Mobile, they're all crazy, because the Gulf Coast is the kingdom of monkeys, the land of clowns, ghosts and musicians, and Mobile is sweet lunacy's county seat. ~ Eugene F. Walter

Gate C22

At gate C22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after
the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like he'd just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she'd been released at last from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning,
the way it gathers and swells, sucking
each rock under, swallowing it
again and again. We were all watching–
passengers waiting for the delayed flight
to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,
the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling
sunglasses. We couldn't look away. We could
taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,
as your mother must have looked at you, no matter
what happened after–if she beat you or left you ~ Ellen Bass

At least once a week, if not once a day, we might each ponder what cosmic truths lie undiscovered before us, perhaps awaiting the arrival of a clever thinker, an ingenious experiment, or an innovative space mission to reveal them. We might further ponder how those discoveries may one day transform life on Earth.
Absent such curiosity, we are no different from the provincial farmer who expresses no need to venture beyond the county line, because his forty acres meet all his needs. Yet if all our predecessors had felt that way, the farmer would instead be a cave dweller, chasing down his dinner with a stick and a rock. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Chad made a sour face. He turned to Shadow. "Okay," said Chad. "Through that door and into the sally port."

"What?"

"Out there. Where the car is."

Liz unlocked the doors. "You make sure that orange uniform comes right back here," she said to the deputy. "The last felon we sent down to Lafayette, we never saw the uniform again. They cost the county money." They walked Shadow out to the sally port, where a car sat idling. It wasn't a sheriff's department car. It was a black town car. Another deputy, a grizzled white guy with a mustache, stood by the car, smoking a cigarette. He crushed it out underfoot as they came close, and opened the back door for Shadow.

Shadow sat down, awkwardly, his movements hampered by the cuffs and the hobble. There was no grille between the back and the front of the car.

The two deputies climbed into the front of the car. The black deputy started the motor. They waited for the sally port door to open.

"Come on, come on," said the black deputy, his fingers drumming against the steering wheel.

Chad Mulligan tapped on the side window. The white deputy glanced at the driver, then he lowered the window. "This is wrong," said Chad. "I just wanted to say that."

"Your comments have been noted, and will be conveyed to the appropriate authorities," said the driver.

The doors to the outside world opened. The snow was still falling, dizzying into the car's headligh ~ Neil Gaiman

She went outside and down the path, pausing by the smokehouse to county the moon flower pods. Another day or two and they would be ready to bloom. The flowers were so lovely, they lasted so short a time. It was almost like the children's visit, something you looked forward to all year, then it came, and you enjoyed it so much, and then it was over, in no time. Maybe that's the way it should be... ~ Jetta Carleton