Chris Offutt > Quotes

“I'd never really found a place in the outside world, but had stayed away too long to fit in at home.”
― Chris Offutt, The Same River Twice: A Memoir

“Sometimes I don't think I've done anything to leave my mark in this world. I'm the kind of person the world leaves a mark on.”
― Chris Offutt, Out of the Woods

“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. —Flannery O’Connor,”
― Chris Offutt, Out of the Woods

“There are times in people’s lives when a significant event occurs and they’re not aware of it—the last time you pick up a son before he’s too heavy, the final kiss of a marriage gone bad, the view of a beloved landscape you’ll never see again. Weeks later, I realized those were Dad’s last words to me.”
― Chris Offutt, My Father, the Pornographer: A Memoir

“it occurred to him that time didn't move forward as he'd always thought. People move through time instead.”
― Chris Offutt, Out of the Woods

“Her chest felt like a shaken snow globe.”
― Chris Offutt, Country Dark

“He demanded to know what I could learn from him, since my subject matter of Kentucky was unfathomably different from his—wealthy people on the East Coast. I became angry. Here was one more older man presenting himself as an obstacle.”
― Chris Offutt, My Father, the Pornographer: A Memoir

“Time piles up like brush. You burn it in the fall and all you remember are the glowing cinders. I got ash heaps everywhere I look. -Old of the Moon”
― Chris Offutt, Kentucky Straight: Stories

“MY FATHER was a brilliant man, a true iconoclast, fiercely self-reliant, a dark genius, cruel, selfish, and eternally optimistic. Early in his sales career, a boss called him an “independent son of a bitch,” which Dad took as the highest compliment he’d ever received. He wanted me to be the same way. Dad had no hobbies, no distractive activities. He didn’t do household chores, wash the car,”
― Chris Offutt, My Father, the Pornographer: A Memoir

“Linda waited, knowing Knox would fill the silence. On average, men tended to interrupt a woman after eight seconds. If a woman didn’t talk, most men couldn’t last four seconds, according to social scientists with government funding and a stopwatch.”
― Chris Offutt, The Killing Hills

“I don’t miss my father, but without his shackles to strain against, the world is terrifying and vast. I have lost a kind of purpose, a reason to prove myself.”
― Chris Offutt, My Father, the Pornographer: A Memoir

“My car contained guns, bundles of cash I’d found hidden about the house, and boxes of vintage pornography. If I got pulled over and searched, I’d probably go to jail. If I had a wreck, money and porn would litter the interstate, mixed with my funeral suit, my grandfather’s rifle, a shotgun, three hundred rounds of ammunition, the remnants of my father’s ashes, and whatever was left of me.”
― Chris Offutt, My Father, the Pornographer: A Memoir

“The tree line was gone and hilltops blended with the black tapestry of night. It was country dark. He closed his eyes, feeling safe.”
― Chris Offutt, Country Dark

“If you've used adverbs, look at them carefully. Adverbs are the weakest words; verbs are the strongest. Many, many times I've found that I have the wrong verb so I'm attempting to cheat and modify the wrong verb by using an adverb.”
― Chris Offutt, The Writer's Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House

“The state called it recidivism, but as the old cons said, Baker was doing life on the installment plan.”
― Chris Offutt, Out of the Woods

“He was always on the verge of sleep, a middle area that provided no rest.”
― Chris Offutt, Country Dark

“Tucker had missed the sheer expanse of sky at night, the tiny cluster of seven sisters, Orion's sword, and the drinking gourd that aimed north. The moon was a gibbous, barely there, as if chewed away. The sky stretched black in every direction. Clouds blocked the stars, lending an unfathomable depth to the air. The tree line was gone and hilltops blended with the black tapestry of night. It was country dark. He closed his eyes, feeling safe.”
― Chris Offutt, Country Dark

“Reading wasn't an attempt to educate myself. It was my chief escape from a world that, although gorgeous in landscape and rich with mountain culture, didn't provide what I needed—the promise of adventure, a life beyond the perimeter of hills. I often fantasized that I'd been adopted and had mysterious powers such as flying or teleportation. Books offered the promise of a world in which misfits like me could flourish. Within the pages of a novel, I was unafraid: of my father, of dogs, snakes, and the bully across the creek; of older boys who drove hot rods close enough to make me jump in the ditch; of armed men parked near the bootlegger.”
― Chris Offutt, My Father, the Pornographer

“He left and I wished I could go somewhere and start all over, which is how I've felt all my life. As soon as I get somewhere, I'm ready to leave.”
― Chris Offutt, Out of the Woods

“It’s how we communicated.’ ‘I like old-fashioned language.’ ‘With cussing,’ he said. ‘Fuck, yeah. Cussing makes you live longer. Did you know that? It gets shit out of your system.”
― Chris Offutt, Shifty’s Boys

“It was country dark. He closed his eyes, feeling safe.”
― Chris Offutt, Country Dark

“They said God always had a plan. Rhonda couldn't see what this plan was other than a punishment.”
― Chris Offutt, Country Dark

“I’d forced myself to interact with so much pornography, I no longer regarded my wife in a sexual manner. Each time I tried, my mind filled with images of fetish porn. I could admire her dress, legs and hips, but the response was aesthetic and intellectual, as if studying art I couldn’t afford.”
― Chris Offutt, My Father, the Pornographer: A Memoir

“Encountering Mick playing with a Slinky was a sight as shocking as seeing his dying uncle.”
― Chris Offutt, Shifty’s Boys

“I never been one to favor laws.”
― Chris Offutt, Country Dark

“He’d be all right if a man was to stretch a cow pussy over his head and let a bull fuck some sense into him.”
― Chris Offutt, Country Dark

“Ma'am, we're past lying to each other. I'm trying to help you."
"Why would you do that?" she said.
"You helped me last night."
"That don't make us friendly."
"No, but it makes us even.”
― Chris Offutt, The Killing Hills

“He wondered why a tree grew so close to the same water that would make it fall. Maybe trees were as greedy as people.”
― Chris Offutt, Country Dark

“She worried that her best was behind her now.”
― Chris Offutt, Country Dark

“He drove out the ridge and off the hill, wondering why he'd waved. It was instinctive, as if something had ended, a farewell to everything that had happened between them for the past sixteen years.”
― Chris Offutt, Country Dark