John Larison > Quotes

“It is the burden of the survivor to wake one day and discover in yourself a stranger.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“This life is cut with trails unrode. There was a time I resented that fact, the cruelty of being stuck to only one. But age like I got teaches you to be grateful for those trails untook. The old mind can wander their lengths and see what the eyes was never allowed, what the eyes would have missed. I’ve had time to wander those trails that interest me.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“Ain't wise for a man with shallow secrets to drink deep.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“Tea has a manner of setting the world right.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“A problem with prosperity is that it makes a place long on crowds and short on people.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“I ain't sure about Heaven, brother, but I know for certain we make our own hell.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“Remember is the name of all children. In that name is the seed and the thaw.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“It is the burden of the survivor to wake up one day and discover in yourself a stranger.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“What started the war, Pa?"
His eyes settled on me. "Stories, Jessilyn, We tell ourselves the wrong stories.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“Pa’s eyes found mine. “We got issue with men. There’s a shortage of answers in this world. It’s the fool who thinks he got them.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“If you got a ma looking out for you, all you got to do is grow up.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“Ain’t it queer the Lord lets us assign names? So much we can’t touch in this life, and yet He give us the power to pick our name. Now that’s something.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“Daughters are what you live for and what will kill you, Straight.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“...Pa was a good soul, full of respect for the women in his life, which might be the straightest measure of a man.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“Your blood is not your fault.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“I was the only person in this world who knew what had come of her. I alone knew the end of her story. But only its final line.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“Woman is water and the rivers in me is dried up.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“I wondered what traveling that fast did to a soul.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“Some things in this world you don't never forget even if you ain't got no memories of it.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“...this is all spectacle for you... You speak of good and evil, and so does he. You speak of Heaven and loyalty, and so does he. You speak of brothers and sisters as he speaks of his constituency. Like him, you spin the world so you may be its savior.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“I held the money in my hand. I couldn't reckon its weight against the man left behind.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“Now there was no escaping the expanse of my foolishness. In a land as wide as this one, how was a lone girl to find a single man? Let alone an outlaw who made his living by not being found?”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“Love is outside the bounds of chance.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“In that place set to song it was easy to be sure”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“The history of civilization written in its weapons.”
― John Larison, The Ancients

“I know, Jess, how easy it is to doubt. But He must be watching. He must. We share a cold world, Jess, and yet as long as heat exists, how can we not trust its source?”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“Hear me. Hear what is true. Nothing wrong in this world is ever the fault of children.”
― John Larison, The Ancients

“All the hours alone, all the sorrows and hopes, every sunset and song condensed into a single point the width of a button's eye, and I imagined my lead center punching that point on each number of their countdown.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“Music turned him to butter.”
― John Larison, Whiskey When We're Dry

“Had you not come,’ Cyrus asked now in nearly a whisper, ‘do you think we would still be here now?’ It was a simple query. Had they not met that night in the theater, would they have met the next day on the street or the next year in the market—or would they still now be strangers? In other words, were they destined to come together or was this between them the result of random chance?”
― John Larison, The Ancients