Lindsay Hunter > Quotes

“We prayed the moon would unstopper long enough to suck us through to the other side so we could see how dull the stars were at their backsides.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Daddy's

“Me wondering why they don't say nothing about a kiss being salty as a tear.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Don't Kiss Me: Stories

“Did you know there are two kinds of people in this world? Those who forgive their parents, and those who don't.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Eat Only When You're Hungry

“Dearest love, let me count the ways. Dismemberment, garroted, poisoned, drowned, named. I read that as soon as a species is named it begins its travels up the endangered list. Discovery meaning death.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Don't Kiss Me: Stories

“It did feel good, every once in a while, to have a family, people who knew you, the rumpled, unadorned you, and loved you no matter what. Sometimes it was like they were each whipping around a skating rink, flying past each other, a waving blur, and sometimes they slowed down at the exact same time and glided together for a while.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Hot Springs Drive

“But, like, it’s us, we lie on our backs to watch the sky pearl to star, we are skin to bite we are hair to flick we are swish, we have the power it’s us we say what we want we say, Come, and we say, Here, and we say, Burn, and we say, Like.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Don't Kiss Me: Stories

“Easy to let someone think they know you, long as you become who they think you are.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Don't Kiss Me: Stories

“I didn’t want them looking at me any more than necessary. That was my default, not wanting to be viewed. Just”
― Lindsay Hunter, Hot Springs Drive

“Everyone was just a lonely mouth, a mouth with teeth, a mouth with ventricles, a muddy hole of a mouth in the crook of someone's elbow.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Eat Only When You're Hungry

“all of them said sorry before they began speaking, and Cece said it too, all of them falling over themselves to have a say without saying it too loudly, too bluntly, too readily.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Hot Springs Drive

“everyone, every single person, had their own humanity that was important and yet none of his business.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Hot Springs Drive

“I wonder does anyone else ever feel this way. Does anyone else ever feel like the wrapper to the taffy.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Don't Kiss Me: Stories

“Running made you look guilty.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Ugly Girls

“I can’t sing, I told the boy. And I ain’t no bitch like your brother called me. The boy lowered himself back down upon me, that weight and that heat making me feel all exploded, I was like to breathe him all up and in, Yes you are, he said, I could feel his breath on my face, yes you are a bitch, I could see up close how he was freckled, he smelled like grass and dirt, his heart like a mallet, ain’t you, he said, ain’t you?”
― Lindsay Hunter, Don't Kiss Me: Stories

“... your daddy who you told when you thought they was goblins in your closet, your daddy who said, Got that right and snapped off the light, and now you thinking how you ain’t hungry for dessert, you thinking how you don’t know what you hungry for, you eyeing that carpet and thinking how there was a time when a spill like that’d remind you quick just how much a man your daddy was, all teeth eyes belt and fist.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Don't Kiss Me: Stories

“In high school Peggy Paula worked as a waiteress at the Perkins. Night shifts were her favorite, kids from her school would come in after games or dances with bleary eyes and messy hair and Peggy Paula knew they’d been drinking and smoking those flimsy joints she’d see them passing, the girls with smudged makeup and rat’s nests in the back of their heads, proud unblinking eyes, scanning the dining room like I dare you, I dare you to guess what I just let Jared or Steve or Casey do to me, I let him and I liked it and I don’t care.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Don't Kiss Me: Stories

“he didn’t know what he looked like, then maybe he wouldn’t have to wonder if how he looked was acceptable to everyone he met.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Hot Springs Drive

“Dallas got a feeling that he tried to laugh off, a feeling like the light coming from the screen was a spotlight on him, like the movie was watching him rather than the other way around, only he didn’t have no story to tell.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Don't Kiss Me: Stories

“At night you slept faceup in your bed. You could see the fan blades going round and round, you could see the headlights sweeping into your room as a car passed and then sweeping right out again. Something about these cars passing compelled you to do something. Life was out there. Do what? Your stomach was a hot stone. Your heart raced. But you did nothing, what could you do? You had decided if it was the man driving by it was best he didn’t see you watching for him. You watched the fan, the cats moaned, you fell asleep, you woke up. You fell asleep.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Don't Kiss Me: Stories

“Did men just walk around all day wondering why everyone was in their way?”
― Lindsay Hunter, Hot Springs Drive

“If he didn’t know what he looked like, then maybe he wouldn’t have to wonder if how he looked was acceptable to everyone he met.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Hot Springs Drive

“Dee one time punched a girl in the mouth, she’d been crying hard just before, her face ruined, black smears down her cheeks and her upper lip all glistened with snot. By that time we knew girls sometimes got ugly. Dee got sent home, came back the next day with her makeup all set again. Lips all wet. Eyes so blue you got to feeling indecent. See, we had seen Dee, we’d seen her a lot, but back then we had our eyes on all the girls, and over time it got to be hard to see how losing one was such a tragedy.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Don't Kiss Me: Stories

“Crackers cheese beer, all that silence and chewing, the television and its noises. Loneliness a nightly death, bed a burial. All this dirt, all that wood. The sound of her voice, even that gone? Gerald’s cremated heart, Gerald’s aching burned-up heart. Nothing but urn left now. Gerald meaning to say, She’s alive and she can’t breathe, thinking how most of the time he hated her, that mean mouth, he missed that hate, its absence a hacked-up emptiness, Gerald meaning to say, She’s alive and she can’t breathe, Gerald saying, I’m alive and I can’t breathe.”
― Lindsay Hunter, Don't Kiss Me: Stories