Michael Koryta > Quotes

“...what still blew them all away was time itself, the days and months and the years, oh yes, the years. They went faster than anything man had the capacity to invent, so fast that for a while they fooled you into thinking they were slow, and was there any crueler trick than that?”
― Michael Koryta, So Cold the River

“You have bound us, Kimble imagined saying, to an evil world. Where’s the love in that? And in that scenario, God always answered, Temporarily bound you, yes. Now, during your time in that evil world, did you do anything to help?”
― Michael Koryta, The Ridge

“You became what you wanted to become. That's what Ezra believe. You could become it if you tried hard enough, could take what you really were and change it, force-feed yourself a new life until it became your old life, too, blurred together until a better self emerged.”
― Michael Koryta, Envy the Night

“based on what the wind does, we build”
― Michael Koryta, Those Who Wish Me Dead

“He stood at the edge of town feeling very small, powerless. Night in the mountains could do that to you, reminding you of your place in the world and laughing at any sense of self-importance.”
― Michael Koryta, Rise the Dark

“You're too worried about figuring out what you can believe about all of this, and then figuring out how to control it. That's how most people approach their lives. Way I feel, though, after a lot of years of living? Not much of what matters in the world is under your control. You don't dictate, you adapt. That's all. So stop trying to control this, and start trying to listen to what it's telling you.”
― Michael Koryta, So Cold the River

“To weep not for the way things had once been but for the way things had been supposed to go and did not. People believed that they were haunted by bad memories, but that wasn’t the truth. The most sinister hauntings were from unrealized futures.”
― Michael Koryta, Last Words

“It was all about size now: the big ran the world on the sweat of the small, and if the big faltered for any reason, the small were the first to go.”
― Michael Koryta, The Cypress House

“Keep your voice down, man. People in this neighborhood hear Pittsburgh, they turn violent. It’s the home of the Steelers, you know.”
― Michael Koryta, The Silent Hour

“Life is short, love is rare, and time is easy to waste.”
― Michael Koryta, How It Happened

“There are different layers of honesty—the truth of what you said and the truth of what was in your heart when you spoke the words.”
― Michael Koryta, The Prophet

“An honorable quality.”
― Michael Koryta, Those Who Wish Me Dead

“He kept the gun in his lap as he drove, and he prayed. It was the strangest prayer he’d ever offered. He asked for strength to do the wrong thing, and then forgiveness for doing it.”
― Michael Koryta, The Prophet

“So much water. It just went on and on and on, a sight that squeezed the soul. He felt so damn small out here. And that felt good. Maybe that was strange, but it felt good. He was insignificant. The world was too big to care about his decisions. There was no weight here, no burden.”
― Michael Koryta, The Cypress House

“Permanecí en silencio. No quería decirle que aquello era una práctica común. No quería contarle que en el mundo de los negocios los secretos son dinero, que el miedo es una arma, que el conocimiento es poder.”
― Michael Koryta, Tonight I Said Goodbye

“Pride and joy of Crime Town, USA.” It was an old nickname, went back almost fifty years, but people still attached it to Youngstown, a gritty factory town an hour from Cleveland.”
― Michael Koryta, The Silent Hour

“Innocence isn’t lost in a blink”
― Michael Koryta, An Honest Man

“The walls were bare wood now, unadorned by the maps and photographs. All that remained was the thumbtacks, which protruded in all directions, tilting like gravestones in a forgotten cemetery.”
― Michael Koryta, The Ridge

“We find people of value,' she said, speaking like a teacher addressing a small child, 'and we determine what story they need to hear. It's the story that they're already telling themselves, don't you see? It's the nightmare they believe in. Once you understand that nightmare, you join them in it. Their fear becomes your fear. It's all a shared experience then. And once you have that, once they feel that is the truth, all the way down to their core, then your coping strategy becomes theirs. It's a natural progression. This is the power of a shared narrative. Of the echo chamber.”
― Michael Koryta, Rise the Dark

“Typical millennial. Do you want free shipping to?”
― Michael Koryta, If She Wakes

“That you shouldn’t bury the past and you shouldn’t idealize it, that either approach was poison. You had to consider the past with clear eyes and a calm heart.”
― Michael Koryta, An Honest Man

“Survivors, Ethan had told this last group of boys while his wife listened from the stable, do not quit. Ever. They STOP. They sit, think, observe, and plan. That, boys, is a stop. Anything else is quitting, and quitting is dying. Are you the surviving kind, or the dying kind?”
― Michael Koryta, Those Who Wish Me Dead

“chuffing”
― Michael Koryta, Those Who Wish Me Dead

“Time is our friend, because for us there is no end. He”
― Michael Koryta, Those Who Wish Me Dead

“La última vez que John Weston vio a su hijo con vida fue una helada tarde de la primera semana de marzo en la que, mientras ambos charlaban a la entrada del garaje, su nieta hacía un muñeco de nieve. Antes de marcharse, le dio una paternal palmadita en el hombro y prometió que volverían a verse pronto. Y así fue. Menos de cuarenta y ocho horas más tarde, lo vio muerto, tendido en una camilla con una bala de pequeño calibre en la cabeza. John se ahorró el horror de ver a su nieta en un estado parecido, pero la razón de ello apenas podía consolarlo. La niña de cinco años, Betsy Weston, y su madre habían desaparecido.”
― Michael Koryta, Tonight I Said Goodbye

“He was giving Gerry that flat stare again, the one that sent spiders crawling into your brain.”
― Michael Koryta, If She Wakes

“acknowledged, was that the world might not care if he was telling the truth. The public was less interested in real justice than in the clean, self-righteous satisfaction of immediate blame. They didn’t want the truth. The truth was complicated, messy, required something of them, maybe even an admission of their own fallibility. All the questioning and the listening and the thinking, so exhausting, who had the time? They just needed someone to hang.”
― Michael Koryta, An Honest Man

“While the Italian mob’s heyday in Cleveland was during the sixties and seventies, Youngstown remained an epicenter for decades longer, featuring constant FBI attention as well as the occasional car bombing or sniper takedown of a major player. During one attempt to pay off the town’s mayor, a priest was involved as a money handler. Ties run deep in Youngstown,”
― Michael Koryta, The Silent Hour

“weakness,”
― Michael Koryta, Those Who Wish Me Dead

“People believed that they were haunted by bad memories, but that wasn’t the truth. The most sinister hauntings were from unrealized futures.”
― Michael Koryta, Last Words