Daniel Abbott > Quotes

“The little girl who loved her father more than anything in the world is gone. Who survived has survived wolves.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“It’s like she’s floating inside of herself, in the dark, and whatever hasn’t already emptied inside her is emptying now...”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“As a teenager I felt misunderstood. I felt confused. Somewhere in that confusion was me. The me I was destined to become.”
― Daniel Abbott, Wounds

“I brought Grand Rapids with me to Newaygo. I brought difference. I was used to a fluid concept of harmony. I was used to diversity. Homogenous harmony has walls. As a fourteen-year-old boy in Newaygo, I felt those walls.”
― Daniel Abbott, Wounds

“If you ask Denny, he will tell you: "I'm a patriot. I love my country." A country that doesn't love him back. Doesn't love him black. A patriot. Let that register. A black patriot. In a country that won't acknowledge that Black Lives Matter.”
― Daniel Abbott, Wounds

“He starts to tell Isaac about his sobriety, but something stops him. Like if he speaks the words aloud he’ll jinx it. Like he’ll piss his demons off and they’ll come lurking about, reenergized, and give him another beating.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“The delivery room is cold and it has a view of the city. A view of smokestacks and snow-kissed rooftops. An industrial grid of squares that seem to go on for miles. And the snowflakes have wings. Big white butterflies suspended in air. The kind kids like to catch on their tongues.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“He’s only ever wanted solace. To thrive in the crevices of existence, slip into the dark cracks of life and avoid the noise. But the noise finds him, the chaos—it’s persistent beckoning toward a path that is not his own. Can never be his own. He needs seclusion. Yet every tangible ability he has requires an audience.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“A crack rock-bottom is beneath rock-bottom. It’s a slab ceiling in every direction. A concrete box filled with guilt. During the chase you’re focused. The only thing that exists is the fix. Your mind is lost in the now, in the journey. Your life, everyone you’re hurting, everything you left behind, it all quiets down until you find this bottom, this moment of clarity. And when you find it the guilt is upon you. There’s nowhere to go. Not until the fix frees you.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Cesar knew better. He did. And love. Love just makes a man weak. A woman, a child—doesn’t matter what face the love has, love makes you stupid, it takes you out of your character, twists you, folds you, it drags you out into deep waters and drowns you. Love has you thinking about all the things you buried. All the things you left behind. It has you thinking about your mother, who was a nurse once, wearing scrubs and coming home late, before all the fighting, before the vodka, before the heroin, before Cesar found her in the bathtub sleeping in her own blood.
Love has you crying on the couch while you’re feeding your baby. Not even a month old and you’re leaving him. Not because you want to, but because of love. Because you love him and you know he’s better off with somebody else. Because it’s the right thing to do. But righteousness doesn’t take the edge of the sting. Because it hurts. Because he’s looking up at you. His eyes wide in awe like you’re God herself. Your son cannot understand a word that you’re saying.

He doesn’t understand that you’re saying goodbye.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Leaving's not an option when there's nowhere to go.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“She hasn’t aged a day, besides the sadness in her eyes.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Give me my brother. You can keep your friends.”
― Daniel Abbott, Wounds

“He knows nothing of those dark roads she’s travelled, those dark deeds she’s done, the doors she’s locked her innocence in. That Joy Green is gone. Those keys are lost. Jackie loves a memory, that’s all, and what good did love ever do anybody anyway.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Cars slowed down as they passed. White drivers with white passengers. White parents with white children, watching. Not seeing, I imagine, three innocent black boys being harassed by racist police officers. Seeing three black criminals being brought to justice. Young minds being shaped into wrong thinking. Generational ignorance being reinforced through misconstrued observation.”
― Daniel Abbott, Wounds

“A line between white and black had been drawn in my life. I straddled that line with an ache I had no name for. An ache I now understand as identity crisis.”
― Daniel Abbott, Wounds

“I was broken when I met her and to say she fixed me would be an exaggeration. I'm still fixing me. My wife is fixing me. My children are fixing me. God stays fixing me. I'm still not fixed. I am and always will be a work-in-progress. What's not an exaggeration is that a black woman showed a white boy unconditional love. A black woman taught a white boy how to unconditionally love. Diane Cartwright saw me as God sees me: as a masterpiece.”
― Daniel Abbott, Wounds

“The city yawns and stretches. A lazy Sunday morning opens its eyes. Cesar’s always loved it down here. The water flowing beneath him. The city surrounding the ancient river. A bright green canopy of trees far off in the distance. Cesar’s always appreciated the beauty. He’s always thought it was a perfect juxtaposition of urban and God.”
― Daniel Abbott

“Let's make America great. We have not been Great, white people. We have chosen to live in our bubbles. White people have chosen to be angry in silence, at our dinner tables, in conversations with people we know and trust. Our black brothers and sisters, our fellow Americans, need allies. They scream and are not heard. They protest for their basic human rights and they are called thugs. Our black brothers and sisters have been losing this fight alone. We have watched the innocent die. We have mourned them with silence.”
― Daniel Abbott, Wounds

“Accountability is the only real beginning to change.”
― Daniel Abbott, Wounds

“Back then and even now, my black friends and family members often tell me they don't consider me white. I don't think that's what they really mean. What they mean is that they feel safe with me. They mean they don't fear the noose in my presence. Their face being pressed to the concrete. My knee being pressed against their neck. My weight bearing down. When they say they don't consider me white, what they mean is that I see them. That I'm with them. That I won't stand for the little white genocides they're subjected to one podium speech at a time.”
― Daniel Abbott, Wounds

“Joy Green has that beast in her. That thing that devours. That greedy parasitic whisper that resides in the bones. And it’s just getting started with her. The only way out is to slay it and Joy’s not the slaying type. Now Cesar’s calculating his losses and he’s livid, with himself, blinded by his own ambition, too stupid to see that thing in her, knowing that beast is going to eat and thinking…
Why not be the hand that feeds it?”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“The gunshots became louder after Joey died. Isaac’s been hearing them on the southeast side for years, but before Joey was murdered they were nothing more than loud snaps in the night. Now they are real. Bullets that hit something. A car door. A window. A ball. A child playing with her Lincoln Logs in the living room. But most times they hit nothing. Nothing according to the news. All these guns and all these bullets—only occasionally someone shot or killed. Imagine this place if the shooters had aim.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Your life is fragile indeed when confronting your child is an act of bravery.”
― Daniel Abbott

“Iggy had only heard whispers, but the truth isn’t something bellowed—the truth is found in the wind, in the cracks of the concrete, in the eyes of people not saying a word, not trying to plead their case. The truth is silent and loud. And the truth about Cesar Bolden is if you cross him you come up missing, no evidence, no leads, you end up gone like you were never there at all.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Joy imagines a fetus in handcuffs. Policemen on either side of it, leading it to its death, strapping it into a toaster-sized chair. Skin smoking. It stares at her with betrayed gray eyes. Guilty of nothing but being shot out of Cesar Bolden’s dumb dick. Being the fastest, strongest swimmer. Breaking through the egg and creating itself.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Even the southeast side of Grand Rapids must bow to the beauty of a Michigan fall.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Your history doesn’t define you; it creates you.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Isaac Page was born in this shit. Joey Cane had tossed himself off of a building and landed in it.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Where the concrete kept his pain at bay, the page gave his pain a place to go.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete