Michael Perry > Quotes

“Summer here comes on like a zaftig hippie chick, jazzed on chlorophyll and flinging fistfuls of butterflies to the sun.”
― Michael Perry, Population: 485

“I deserve a swift kick in the shorts for all the times I've stubbornly wound my way through the library stacks, my mule head leading the way, searching fruitlessly for information a librarian could put in my hands in a matter of minutes.”
― Michael Perry

“It (a singer's voice) sounds as if it was aged in a whiskey cask, cured in an Ozarks smokehouse, dropped down a stone well, pulled out damp, and kept moist in the palm of a wicked woman's hand.”
― Michael Perry

“Sleeping in the same bed with someone to whom you can admit your failings is a lasting comfort indeed. This is not about "mea culpa" as surrender, it is about "mea culpa" as mortar in binding together the uneven bricks of a human foundation.”
― Michael Perry, Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace

“Cynicism is overrated, and far too easy. In small doses, cynicism--like irony--provides an essential tempering quality. But to wallow in it, and to dismiss things like hope and faith, is cowardly and unoriginal.”
― Michael Perry, Off Main Street: Barnstormers, Prophets Gatemouth's Gator: Essays

“I am a stranger in a strange town, and the man standing beside me has just removed his pants. There are mitigating factors—he is well-kempt, we are in a laundromat, and as a registered nurse, I have seen this sort of thing before—but they fail to completely dissipate the tension inherent in sharing close quarters with a pantless stranger.”
― Michael Perry, Truck: A Love Story

“There commenced an epic snit.”
― Michael Perry, Truck: A Love Story

“a place in the present. This, as they say, is where my roots are. The trick is in reattaching.”
― Michael Perry, Population: 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time

“I began to realize how this fire department was a means of reentry, of rediscovering the place I had left a decade before, of recapturing my sense of place one tragedy at a time.”
― Michael Perry, Population: 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time

“In specific moments of ground-level clarity, I recognize the dumbing down of the nation for what it is: an act of charity committed specifically for knotheads like me.”
― Michael Perry

“Even at twenty below, snow brightens the bleak earth.”
― Michael Perry, Truck: A Love Story

“The birds are ready. They have grown at a steroidal rate on their hog feed and now clomp around the confines of their pen like clucking sumos.”
― Michael Perry, Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting – A Heartfelt and Humorous Memoir of Wisconsin Farming and Fatherhood

“Small-town folk want to appear skeptic and shrewd, but more than that, we really, really want the newfangled doodad.”
― Michael Perry, Population: 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time

“Like a thickening woman, one halter top strap off the shoulder, like a man adjusting his thin hair while his sports car idles, there is evidence that summer is going to seed, leaving you to nurse regret through the fall, the season of penitence.”
― Michael Perry, Off Main Street: Barnstormers, Prophets & Gatemouth's Gator: Essays – A Humorous and Poetic Journey Through Small-Town America

“THE OLD CAR WAS SUNK TO THE BUMPERS WHEN I DISCOVERED IT, but my first thought was how good it would be to sleep in there and hear the rain drumming on steel rather than splattering against our tattered old tarp. I was Maggie back then. Maggie, the name my parents gave me. A nice name. But these weren’t nice times. We were tired and hungry, and the GreyDevil bonfires were burning brighter and the solar bear howls were getting closer, and every morning as I strapped my SpitStick across my back and set out to scavenge, I found myself thinking I needed a better name. A stronger name. I mean, the name Maggie was fine, it just seemed kinda underpowered. So when I scrubbed the moss from the side of that old car overlooking Goldmine Gully and saw the chrome letters—Ford Falcon—I climbed up on the hood and stood there with my steel-toed boots planted wide and I wedged my fists on my hips and I announced that Maggie was yesterday, and from this day forward I would answer only to Ford Falcon. Ford, because we had a lot of rivers to cross. Falcon, because, well, if you have a lot of rivers to cross, a pair of wings can’t hurt, and then once you get across the river it’s likely you will need sharp eyes and an even sharper beak. Yes. I know. I named myself after an old dead car. Worse yet, it’s not even a cool car. It’s a station wagon. Station wagons were how parents hauled kids around during the time between covered wagons and minivans. These days you won’t see a minivan unless it’s being pulled by a horse, and even horses are hard to come by. But if you see me you will know me because I wear a vest made from the hide of a beast that tried to kill me and lost. I skinned that beast myself, and also I skinned the lettering from that old dead car and stitched it to the vest across my shoulder blades using copper wire so that in polished chrome the world can read my name and know it: Ford Falcon.”
― Michael Perry, The Scavengers: A Middle Grade Adventure About Family Rescue and Survival in a Post-Apocalyptic World for Kids

“Are you familiar with the real estate between a cow’s eyeballs? For the purposes of simulation, drape a thin rug over a concrete block and then hit it bare-fisted as hard as you can.”
― Michael Perry, Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting – A Heartfelt and Humorous Memoir of Wisconsin Farming and Fatherhood

“You want to be a hero bad enough, you make your own disasters.”
― Michael Perry, Population: 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time

“He guides the photographers to his sawmill now, cutting between the backside of the shed that stores the cannon and the woven wire fence establishing the boundary of the interstate right-of-way. Across the highway, a white cross is visible. It is fourteen feet tall and stands on Tom’s property, just outside the state fence line. He points it out for the photographers. Yah, n’that cross over there, there was a woman state trooper killed over there. They wanted to put a memorial up for her but the state wouldn’t allow a crucifix on public land. So they come to me, asked me if they could put it on my land. I said sure, on one condition: You make it big as you can.”
― Michael Perry, Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace – A Poignant Memoir of Wisdom and Spirit in Rural Wisconsin

“atavistic”
― Michael Perry, The Jesus Cow

“COCK-A-DOODLE . . . AAACK-KACK-KACK-KACK!” Way down in Hoot Holler, Hatchet the Rooster is ruling the roost. It’s tough to rule the roost when all of your cock-a-doodles sputter out like you’re gagging on a crossways caterpillar, but Hatchet’s ego is twice the size of his multicolored mop of a tail, and I guarantee you by the time that last kack! echoes off Skullduggery Ridge he’s already fluffing his feathers and strutting around like that’s exactly what he meant to say. “Cock-a-doodle . . . aaack-kack-kack-kack!” Hatchet belongs to our neighbors Toad and Arlinda Hopper. They live a half-hour hike away, down the western side of Skullduggery Ridge, but even though we can’t see their farm from here the crowing comes through loud and clear. That rooster has brass lungs. And once he gets started, he doesn’t stop. He’ll crow at noon, he’ll crow at the moon, he’ll crow any which way the wind blows. Most of all, he’ll crow whenever he feels the need to remind the world that he is a rooster, which is about every six minutes. That bird is as loopy as a ball of snarled yarn. “Cock-a-doodle . . . aaack-kack-kack-kack!” Guess”
― Michael Perry, The Scavengers: A Middle Grade Adventure About Family Rescue and Survival in a Post-Apocalyptic World for Kids

“I like to think of myself as roughneck scribe of rugged cut and poetic intent, but right now that is difficult as I am typing up this column in the middle seat of a minivan en route to a high school volleyball game where I will be just another bald dad thinking, “Wow that popcorn smells good,” and perhaps peeking at my phone to check the score of the football game.”
― Michael Perry, MILLION BILLION: Brief Essays on Snow Days, Spitwads, Bad Sandwiches, Dad Socks, Hairballs, Headbanging Bird Love, and Hope.