Clay Anderson > Quotes

“I tried to search out God’s hand in everything. Every tragedy I wanted to find the almighty’s reason for it being so. Yet, after many years, I concluded that there was no motive behind the good or bad things that befall mankind. There was no other course. Retracing those steps will just lead to the confirmation that our life is purely made of chaotic events strung together.”
― Clay Anderson, The Palms: A novel

“She let the tears come. Anna wept in the way of an only and lonely child, because now, that was what she was. An acolyte of some new order. The fellowship of the damned. As above, so below. This was the ending of a cycle. All closing in. The sanctity was inchoate. Anna let the images of all she’d done and lost pass before her. She grieved her griefs. At long last, they came.”
― Clay Anderson, Though I Walk

“There wasn’t a cloud in the cobalt sky. Gone were the miseries of winter and the encumbered horrors of the recent past. Gone were the naked trees that looked like fingers on a skeleton. The landscape sprouted bits of greenery signaling the advance of spring and the dawning of a new season, year, life.”
― Clay Anderson, Though I Walk

“She returned to numbness and despair. Life as it really was. A shrinking world of waiting terrors followed by nameless oblivion. The animate life of the Palms left her encumbered with the fact that she’d have to return to the crack house in the morning. Everything gnarled and black in her heart. Clara turned down seventh street. She heard the sounds of Joe snorting a bump of meth and the terrible rattling tick from deep in the car’s engine. She hoped for a message or warning in the tableau but was left wanting, as always.”
― Clay Anderson, The Palms: A novel

“He remembered those countless nights staring at the irrevocable concrete and wishing he might will himself beyond the dungeon. Yet, the evocative beseeching for God never reached beyond the guard towers. Mechanistic accretions that eroded in the ether and died shortly after the moment of conception. This world incubated and full of things that you have no control over. Windless air in the tomb that perpetually stank of a milieu of filthy men and toxic bleach. That was now gone. Finally, Ronnie had what he prayed for those many nights. A plan that was based off more than the basic human contingencies. A reason to live that was outside of himself.”
― Clay Anderson, The Palms: A novel

“Life is nothing but what you make of it. The past can own you, but only if you give it that right. Most people are unaware that you can say no.”
― Clay Anderson, The Palms: A novel

“What happened? I got into a disagreement with some pretty bad guys over the ownership of my jail commissary. They were pretty adamant that it should be theirs. I thought differently. Some words were said. One decided that he wanted to see what my insides looked like.”
― Clay Anderson, The Palms: A novel

“You can find the hand of God in destruction. Just like you can in miracles. God is quite wrathful, and if you inquire sufficiently, you can find evidence of his nameless rage. Your desire has to be strong enough. But you must be careful. God does not destroy without reason. The joinery is not completely hidden. No, you just need to know where to look…The past cannot be mended. In many ways it doesn’t exist. Some think it’s all that matters, but there is no such truth there. The past is dead. The future a question. All that matters is the present”
― Clay Anderson, Though I Walk