Bobbie Ann Mason > Quotes

“One day I was counting the cats and I absent-mindedly counted myself.”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh and Other Stories

“I don’t know, it is a very quiet rebellion. […] I don’t get angry. I sit quietly in the corner and say 'no'.”
― Bobbie Ann Mason

“One reason to fashion a story is to lift a grudge.”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, Clear Springs

“Mary Lou suddenly realizes that Mack calls the temperature number because he is afraid to talk on the telephone, and by listening to a recording, he doesn’t have to reply. It’s his way of pretending that he’s involved. He wants it to snow so he won’t have to go outside. He is afraid of what might happen. But it occurs to her that what he must really be afraid of is women. Then Mary Lou feels so sick and heavy with her power over him that she wants to cry. She sees the way her husband is standing there in a frozen pose. Mack looks as though he could stand there all night with the telephone receiver against his ear.”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh and Other Stories

“He did so innocently, without intention or design.”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, Elvis Presley

“Elvis’s fame happened to him—not entirely unbidden, but in proportions he had not imagined or sought. He was a dreamer, aspiring to stardom. He wanted to be big.”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, Elvis Presley

“He was hiding there in the dark when Dewey Phillips called the Presley house,”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, Elvis Presley

“In the wild, there are two types of cat populations," I tell him when he finishes his move. "Residents and transients. Some stay put, in their fixed home ranges, and others are on the move. They don't have real homes. Everybody always thought that the ones who establish the territories are the most successful--like the capitalists who get ahold of Park Place. They are the strongest, while the transients are the bums, the losers." ... I continue bravely. "The thing is--this is what the scientists are wondering about now--it may be that the transients are the superior ones after all, with the greatest curiosity and most intelligence. They can't decide.”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh and Other Stories

“Leroy used to tell hitchhikers his whole life story — about his travels, his hometown, the baby. He would end with a question: “Well, what do you think?” It was just a rhetorical question. In time, he had the feeling that he’d been telling the same story over and over to the same hitchhikers. He quit talking to hitchhikers when he realized how his voice sounded—whining and self-pitying, like some teenage-tragedy song. Now Leroy has the sudden impulse to tell Norma Jean about himself, as if he had just met her. They have known each other so long they have forgotten a lot about each other. They could become reacquainted. But when the oven timer goes off and she runs to the kitchen, he forgets why he wants to do this.”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh and Other Stories

“A dead baby feels like a sack of flour.”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh

“Arrondissement,”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, The Girl in the Blue Beret

“The next day, Mabel and Jet visited the battleground, and then Norma Jean was born, and then she married Leroy and they had a baby, which they lost, and now Leroy and Norma Jean are here at the same battleground. Leroy knows he is leaving out a lot. He is leaving out the insides of history. History was always just names and dates to him. It occurs to him that building a house out of logs is similarly empty—too simple. And the real inner workings of a marriage, like most of history, have escaped him. Now he sees that building a log house is the dumbest idea he could have had. It was clumsy of him to think Norma Jean would want a log house. It was a crazy idea.”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh and Other Stories

“Rather than making black music or white music or a white imitation of black music, he was making music that was the voice of the Southern poor—both black and white working-class groups. “In their indigence and low social”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, Elvis Presley

“Since he has been home, he has felt unusually tender about his wife and guilty over his long absences. But he can’t tell what she feels about him. Norma Jean has never complained about his traveling; she has never made hurt remarks, like calling his truck a “widow-maker.” He is reasonably certain she has been faithful to him, but he wishes she would celebrate his permanent homecoming more happily. Norma Jean is often startled to find Leroy at home, and he thinks she seems a little disappointed about it.”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh and Other Stories

“dark forces,”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, Elvis Presley

“Gusts of snow blew in front of the car as he felt his way toward Man o' War Boulevard .... The snow-covered fields made him think of the desert. Black fences rimmed with snow created a grid against the blank, vanished ground. He saw five snow-blanketed horses huddled under a clump of trees .... He was surprised they weren't lolling on feather beds in their climate-controlled barns. Racehorses got better care than some people, he thought.”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, Zigzagging Down Wild Trail