Jonis Agee > Quotes

“There's a lot of true things that happen in our life. I think we see them at the very moment they happen too, then we try to forget about them.”
― Jonis Agee, A .38 Special and a Broken Heart

“She stooped to pick a wild pink rose, avoiding the tiny spines that slivered like unseen glass hairs onto one's fingers. There was little scent, but the creamy softness of the petals like the insides of a dog's ear more than made up for it. She placed one on her tongue, and imagined she could taste the hills, the bittersweet tang of life.”
― Jonis Agee, The Bones of Paradise

“You can't push on a person so hard that they have to give up every single secret, she was discovering. Some things were better locked away in the heart where they could remain a hard, bitter kernel that they had become in such darkness.”
― Jonis Agee, The River Wife

“She blew in like a hard west wind, the kind that dropped a man's bones to zero, froze his hair to his skull, and clogged his eyes with ice.”
― Jonis Agee, The Bones of Paradise

“Dulcinea could not leave this land. She finally understood how the wind out here made a place for itself in your ear, in your mind, and in your heart, stilling your thoughts, making everything you see one vast wholeness: the swan gliding across the silent marsh, the mossy turtles climbing like ancient men out of the water, their claws gripping the soil with great effort to drag themselves despite the tangled water plants that dragged their yellow-scaled legs back, their ragged beaks parted with effort. She couldn’t think without the Sand Hills wind hushing the great world around her as she pushed herself into its embrace. Maybe a bad thing never died, as the men were fond of saying, and good lived but for a moment. This was a thing she could accept.”
― Jonis Agee, The Bones of Paradise

“People couldn’t help the pain that rode them like overbroke ponies and tired them too soon for the length of a life.”
― Jonis Agee, The Bones of Paradise

“They were teaching the horse to work cattle, and Graver showed her son how to ride in concert with the animal, not against it. She saw that was the way a person must move through the world, while across the hills, the evening fog drifted like an exhaled breath and the peepers began their rhythmic chirring music as the night horses pulled the dark curtain across the sky until they slept and awakened once more, rising like dreamers out of the mist to claim the world again.”
― Jonis Agee, The Bones of Paradise

“But when you make love, the dead stay close, fill the bed, lie along the bodies in tiers, sandwiching all their lives with yours.”
― Jonis Agee, A .38 Special and a Broken Heart