Ron Rash > Quotes

“Then one morning she’d begun to feel her sorrow easing, like something jagged that had cut into her so long it had finally dulled its edges, worn itself down. That same day Rachel couldn’t remember which side her father had parted his hair on, and she’d realized again what she’d learned at five when her mother left – that what made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting the small things first, the smell of the soap her mother had bathed with, the color of the dress she’d worn to church, then after a while the sound of her mother’s voice, the color of her hair. It amazed Rachel how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until you could finally endure it. After more time passed you could let yourself remember, even want to remember. But even then what you felt those first days could return and remind you the grief that was still there, like old barbed wire embedded in a tree’s heartwood.”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“But nothing is solid and permanent. Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations. You don't need to read history books to know that. You only have to know the history of your own life.”
― Ron Rash, One Foot in Eden

“It's a hard place this world can be. No wonder a baby cries coming in to it. Tears from the start”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“Don't love anything that can be taken away.”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“What made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting small things first... it's amazing how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until you could finally endure it. After more time passed you could let yourself remember, even want to remember. But even then what you felt those first days could return and remind you the grief was still there, like old barbed wire embedded in a tree's heartwood.”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“She realized that being starved for words was the same as being starved for food, because both left a hollow place inside you, a place you needed filled to make it through another day. Rachel remembered how growing up she’d thought living on a farm with just a father was as lonely as you could be. (130)”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“You got one choice at the beginning but if you didn't choose right, things got narrow real quick.”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“It struck her how eating was a comfort during a hard time because it reminded you that there had been other days, good days, when you’d eaten the same thing. Reminded you there were good days in life, when precious little else did. (268)”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“It’s ever been the way of the man of science or philosophy. Most folks stay in the dark and then complain they can’t see nothing.” – Snipes (185)”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“Nothing is but what is now”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“One thing's sure and nothing surer. The rich get richer and the poor get- children”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“And darkness. You can’t see it no more than you can see air, but when it’s all around you sure enough know it.”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“She walks in beauty.”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“A place where something so terrible had happened shouldn't continue to exist in the world”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“The woman doesn't look up. It's as if she's deaf. Maybe she is. Maybe she's like the Cambodian women I've read about, the ones who witnessed so many atrocities that they have willed themselves blind. Maybe that's what you have to do sometimes to survive. You kill off part of yourself, your hearing or eyesight, your capacity for hope. ”
― Ron Rash, Chemistry and Other Stories

“We want what's in this world but we also want what ain't.”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“Some claim heaven has streets of gold and all such things, but I hold a different notion. When we’re there, we’ll say to the angels, why, a lot of heaven’s glory was in the place we come from. And you know what them angels will say? They’ll say yes, pilgrim, and how often did you notice? What did you seek?”
― Ron Rash, Above the Waterfall

“Others can make us vulnerable and the sooner such vulnerabilities are dealt with the better”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“A small profit it better than a big loss”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“Spend a long time alone, especially if you're someone who's never been that social to begin with, and you find yourself craving solitude.”
― Ron Rash, Above the Waterfall

“I don’t even have a choice. Rachel thought how that was pretty much true of everything now, that you got one choice at the beginning but if you didn’t choose right, and she hadn’t, things got narrow real quick. Like trying to wade a river, she thought. You take a wrong step and set your foot on a wobbly rock or in a drop-off and you’re swept away, and all you can do then is try to survive. (83)”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“Maybe calling it being hitched ain’t the prettiest way to say you’re married, but it’s the truth to my mind and true in a good way, because you’re working together and depending on each other, and you’re sharing the load.”
― Ron Rash, The Cove

“Water has its own archaeology, not a layering but a leveling, and thus is truer to our sense of the past, because what is memory but near and far events spread and smoothed beneath the present's surface.”
― Ron Rash, Nothing Gold Can Stay: Stories

“You men notice so little, Pemberton. Physical strength is your gender's sole advantage.”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“Dead and still in the world was worse than dead and in the ground. Dead in the ground at least gave you the hope of heaven.”
― Ron Rash, The Cove

“The lift of her heart she'd felt on the outcrop she now felt again, and it wasn't just love. She'd felt love before, known its depths when her mother died.
This was something rarer. Happiness, Laurel thought, that must be what this is.”
― Ron Rash, The Cove

“Not for the first time, it occurred to me that sorrow could be purified into song the same way a piece of coal is purified into a diamond.”
― Ron Rash, Saints at the River

“Then it became clear that it was a song, the loneliest sort of song because the notes changed so little, like one bird calling and waiting for another to answer. It was as lonely a sound as she’d ever heard.”
― Ron Rash, The Cove

“We had some good times at school. I didn't know how good those times was till I left, but I guess that's the way of it”
― Ron Rash, Serena

“Superstitions are just coincidence or ignorance.”
― Ron Rash, The Cove