Wiley Cash > Quotes

“There is an old saying that every story, even your own, is either happy or sad depending on where you stop telling it. I believe I'll stop telling this one here.”
― Wiley Cash, The Last Ballad

“[Death is] to lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.” —THOMAS WOLFE, YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN”
― Wiley Cash, A Land More Kind Than Home

“I’ve learned to just go ahead and take fairness out of the equation. If you do, things stand the chance of making a whole lot more sense.”
― Wiley Cash, A Land More Kind Than Home

“You exist whether it is written down or not, and you are dead whether it's written down or not too.”
― Wiley Cash, The Last Ballad

“It don’t get no easier to lose somebody you love,” Ella said. “No matter how long it’s been.”
― Wiley Cash, The Last Ballad

“and I can tell you God makes us how he needs us to be.”
― Wiley Cash, A Land More Kind Than Home

“I'd always thought of him as one of those fat catfish swimming in the Catawba River, trudging along the bottom with his belly in the mud, his mouth open, feeding on whatever he came across.”
― Wiley Cash

“The trees along the road were mad with crows. The birds ruffled the leaves like a heavy wind, and their cries seemed to bore into Verchel’s ears.”
― Wiley Cash, The Last Ballad

“It was like Mama was lost in the desert and had gotten so thirsty that she was willing to see anything that might make her feel better about being lost.”
― Wiley Cash, A Land More Kind Than Home

“But that tree that grew up between them was just a gnarly old thing with thick roots that ran deep and wild and tore at the ground until it opened up, and, once it did, Julie found herself clear across a great divide from Ben, so far apart that they couldn’t even see each other from where they stood.”
― Wiley Cash, A Land More Kind Than Home

“Sprays of blue and purple wildflowers grew along the bank, and as she ran past them Ella marked their beauty, thinking what a strange thing it was for her to notice them in such detail at this moment. She did not know who ran in front of her or behind her, but she was aware that the dirt had blackened and hardened, and she discovered that she ran through the first rows of a cotton field, the bolls exploding in white puffs all around here. There were more gunshots behind her, and she wanted to drop to her knees and take shelter, but the field was open and the cotton plants low, and there was nowhere else to go.”
― Wiley Cash, The Last Ballad

“Theirs was a strange generation. They grew up with headlines about marches, protests, and sit-ins; they watched the Vietnam War and Woodstock live on color television; they all wanted to be H. Rap Brown and Jane Fonda and Patty Hearst; and when they turned eighteen and felt the full conviction of their revolutionary duty, they all voted for a soft-spoken peanut farmer who was systematically humiliated from his earliest days in office until what seemed his very last.”
― Wiley Cash, When Ghosts Come Home

“There is an old saying that every story, even your own, is either happy or sad depending on where you stop telling it.”
― Wiley Cash, The Last Ballad

“And the Lord knows that when people don’t get what they need they take what they can find,”
― Wiley Cash, A Land More Kind Than Home

“on the whole drive over I couldn’t keep from thinking about how unfair it would be if it was Jeff. But since then I’ve learned to just go ahead and take fairness out of the equation. If you do, things stand the chance of making a whole lot more sense.”
― Wiley Cash, A Land More Kind Than Home

“every story, even your own, is either happy or sad depending on where you stop telling it”
― Wiley Cash

“Humph,” she said as if she’d discovered something.”
― Wiley Cash, This Dark Road to Mercy

“You're somebody, just as good as anybody.”
― Wiley Cash, The Last Ballad

“In the story, Colleen’s mother would be lost in the woods, and she would discover a house that was an exact replica of their own. She would be surprised when her key fit the lock, and she would go inside to look around. In each room—the kitchen, the living room, Colleen’s room, her and Colleen’s father’s bedroom—she would find a different version of Colleen, some older, some much younger. Colleen’s mother called it the Magic House because it was a place she could always go to find all the Colleens that Colleen had ever been.”
― Wiley Cash, When Ghosts Come Home

“Sprays of blue and purpose wildflowers grew along the bank, and as she ran past them Ella marked their beauty, thinking what a strange thing it was for her to notice them in such detail at this moment. She did not know how ran in front of her or beside her or behind her, but she was aware that the dirt had blackened and hardened, and she discovered that she ran through the first rows of a cotton field, the bolls exploding in white puffs all around her. There were more gunshots behind her, and she wanted to drop to her knees and take shelter, but the field was open and the cotton plants low, and there was nowhere else to go.”
― Wiley Cash

“Your wife can't give you that. All she can do is fool you into believing you don't want the things you actually want. That ain't grace," Wiggins said. "That's trickery.”
― Wiley Cash, The Last Ballad

“the librarians and booksellers who sustain the creative, intellectual and civic life of our nation.”
― Wiley Cash, The Last Ballad

“the hallway to the front door where the keys to the cruiser”
― Wiley Cash, A Land More Kind Than Home

“A storm had passed between them, destroying every structure in sight and ripping trees from the earth, but neither of them would ever acknowledge the carnage, choosing instead to live exposed to the elements in silence.”
― Wiley Cash, When Ghosts Come Home