John Hart > Quotes

“She turned the water scalding hot and scrubbed her face until it hurt, but the eyes still looked wrong. She tore off her clothes and stepped into the shower; but it was not enough.
The dirt was on the inside.”
― John Hart, The Last Child

“Lightening falls, all you can do is- pray God that it doesn't fall on you.”
― John Hart, The Last Child

“We can all live with doubts. It's the knowing that breaks us.

Iron House”
― John Hart

“We the unwilling, led by the unqualified to kill the unfortunate, die for the ungrateful.”
― John Hart, The Unwilling

“I'd been awake for thirty-six hours and driving for ten. Restless weeks, sleepless nights, and the decision stole into me like a thief. I never planned to go back to North Carolina- I'd buried it- but I blinked and found my hands on the wheel, Manhattan a sinking island to the north. I wore a week-old beard and three day denim, felt stretched by an edginess that bordered on pain, but no one here would fail to recognize me. That's what home was all about, for good or bad.”
― John Hart, Down River

“Then she turned for the great mouth of a door, and by the time it inhaled her, she was a much older woman.”
― John Hart, Down River

“Disgust was an organ in Hunt's gut. The more he thought about it, the more it churned.”
― John Hart, The Last Child

“For a year, Johnny lived the new, brutal truth that he was on his own.
But that's the way it was. What had been concrete one day proved sand the next; strength was illusion; faith meant shit. So what? So his once-bright world had devolved to cold, wet fog. That was life, the new order. Johnny had nothing to trust but himself, so that's the way he rolled - his path, his choices, and no looking back.”
― John Hart, The Last Child

“Our questions, which began politely, were politely ignored.”
― John Hart, The King of Lies

“I'm sixty-nine years old, and I have no plans to run for reelection. Do you think I give a damn?”
― John Hart, The King of Lies

“We can live with doubts," Jessop said "It's the knowing that breaks us.”
― John Hart, Iron House

“Are you familiar with the word inspiration? The meaning of it? Where it comes from?...In the Dark Ages no understood the things that made some people special. Every soul in that dark, difficult time faced the same limitations, every soul except a precious few who saw things differently, the poets, inventors, artists, stone masons. Regular folks didn't understand how a person could wake up one day and see the world differently. They thought it was a gift from God. Thus the word "inspiration." It means breathed upon...breathed upon by God himself.”
― John Hart, Redemption Road

“It is in suffering that we are withdrawn from the sway of time and mere things, and find ourselves in the presence of profounder truth.”
― John Hart, Redemption Road

“We crossed through cornfields and soy, a new planting of loblolly pines,”
― John Hart, Down River

“The silence inside was familiar from all the years of mourning, a large house with parts of its soul carved away.”
― John Hart, The Unwilling

“I wondered if there was any of that boy left in me, or had the cancer, indeed, eaten him all away?”
― John Hart, Down River

“Go to hell.
Come back burning.”
― John Hart, Iron House

“Unsettle the mind; destroy the balance. Destroy the balance; obliterate the man.”
― John Hart, The Unwilling

“as dark did with light and weakness with strength. Nothing was simple or pure;”
― John Hart, Redemption Road

“Even in a place like this, there are dark corners.”
― John Hart, Redemption Road

“I'm a killer, not a thief.”
― John Hart, Iron House

“Jack laughed, and the sound frightened him because there was no rationality in it. It sounded broken and wild, and that’s exactly how childhood with Johnny had ended, not in quietness and time, but in a sudden rush of secrets and death and superstitious dread.”
― John Hart, The Hush

“The gray light was unforgiving, and the road in was a hard, fast slide to the bottom rung of the human experience.”
― John Hart, Down River

“The mind wanders and the mouth, it seems, is more than willing to follow.”
― John Hart, Down River

“It was a paradox of life behind walls, that where any day could end in blood, every morning contrived to start exactly the same. A man woke and, for two beats of his heart, didn’t know where he was or what he’d become. Those few seconds were magic, a warm flicker before reality walked across his chest, the black dog of remembrance trailing at its feet.”
― John Hart, Redemption Road

“Where Johnny chose to see cause and effect, Jack saw the hand of God, and of the devil himself. That wasn’t hyperbole or false belief; he knew it like he knew his bones: that the world ran shadowed and deep, that evil was real and had a face. Because of that, Jack sought order, solidity, control.”
― John Hart, The Hush

“But childhood was not all good, nor were its lessons. Good came with the bad, as dark did with light and weakness with strength. Nothing was simple or pure; everyone had secrets. What”
― John Hart, Redemption Road

“But death and blood was part of what it took to go from boy to man, no matter what my mother had to say about it.”
― John Hart, Down River

“Cesaretim olmadığı için hayatta değildim, cesareti keşfettiğim için hayattaydım. Tetiği çekebilirdim ama çekmedim. Neden? Çünkü hayat kusursuz değildi, olmayacaktı da.”
― John Hart

“She had faith that each moment would be finer than the last. She believed that people were good,”
― John Hart, Iron House