Daniel Woodrell > Quotes

“Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“The heart's in it then, spinning dreams, and torment is on the way. The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“You got to be ready to die every day - then you got a chance.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“Pine trees with low limbs spread over fresh snow made a stronger vault for the spirit than pews and pulpits ever could.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“This is how sudden things happened that haunted forever.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“Fading light buttered the ridges until shadows licked them clean and they were lost to nightfall.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“She would never cry where her tears might be seen and counted against her.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“Love and hate hold hands always so it made natural sense that they'd get confused by upset married folk in the wee hours once in a while and a nosebleed or bruised breast might result. But it just seemed proof that a great foulness was afoot in the world when a no-strings roll in the hay with a stranger led to chipped teeth or cigarette burns on the wrist.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“I said shut up once already, with my mouth.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“I think one of our cardinal fuckups is how we insist that even vicious whimsical crazy shit needs to make sense, add up, belong to a reason. We lay this pain on ourselves--there must be a reason behind this horror, there must, but I ain't adequate to findin' it, and that's my fault, so torture me some more.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“Nobody here wants to be awful," he said. He hopped a little as he zipped up. "It's just nobody here knows all the rules yet, and that makes a rocky time.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“The first time Ree kissed a man it was not a man, but Gail acting as a man, and as the kissing progressed and Gail acting as a man pushed her backwards onto a blanket of pine needles in shade and slipped her tongue deep into Ree's mouth, Ree found herself sucking on the wiggling tongue of a man in her mind, sucking that plunging tongue of the man in her mind until she tasted morning coffee and cigars and spit leaked from between her lips and down her chin. She opened her eyes then and smiled, and Gail yet acting the man roughed up her breasts with grabs and pinches, kissed her neck, murmuring and Ree said, "Just like that! I want it to be just like that!" There came three seasons of giggling and practice, puckering readily anytime they were alone, each being the man and the woman, each on top and bottom, pushing for it with grunts or receiving it with signs. The first time Ree kissed a boy who was not a girl his lips were soft and timid on hers, dry and unmoving, until finally she had to say it and did, "Tongue, honey, tongue," and the boy she called honey turned away saying, "Yuck!”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“The old man had been tanned by the light of too many beer signs, and it just goes to show that you can’t live on three packs of Chesterfields and a fifth of bourbon a day without starting to drift far too fuckin’ wide in the turns.”
― Daniel Woodrell, The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do

“I had been born shoved to the margins of the world, sure, but I had volunteered for the pits.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“No god craves weaklings.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“The men came to mind as mostly idle between nights of running wild or time in the pen, cooking moon and gathering around the spout, with ears chewed, fingers chopped, arms shot away, and no apologies grunted ever. The women came to mind bigger, closer, with their lonely eyes and homely yellow teeth, mouths clamped against smiles, working in the hot fields from can to can't, hands tattered rough as dry cobs, lips cracked all winter, a white dress for marrying, a black dress for burying, and Ree nodded yup. Yup.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“The Dolly's around here can't be seen to coddle a snitch's family --- that's the always been our way. We're old blood, us people, and our ways was set firm long before hot shot baby Jesus ever even burped milk'n sh*& yellow.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“Gail had a baby named Ned who was four months old, and a new look of baffled hurt, a left-behind sadness, like she saw that the great world kept spinning onward and away while she'd overnight become glued to her spot.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“This new spot for life might be but a short journey as a winged creature covers it, that is often said, but, oh, Lord, as you know, I had not the wings, and it is a hot, hard ride by road.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Woe to Live On

“When the mushrooms took hold she sensed some of the gods calling to her from inside her own chest and followed their urging outside into the yard and up the sunny slope into the trees. She felt all gooey, gooey with the slobbered love of various gods gathered within, and smiling full-time went about the woods looking to collect butterflies and pet them until they gave milk, or maybe roll in the dirt until she felt China through her skin.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“It's not always to the benefit of the story to have it so preordained.”
― Daniel Woodrell

“Wanda Bone Bouvier had that thing that makes a hound leap against its cage. It ws a quality that was partly a bonus from nature and partly learned from cheesecake calendars and Tanya Tucker albums.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Muscle for the Wing

“...the great name of the Dollys was Milton, and ...if you named a son Milton it was a decision that attempted to chart the life he'd live before he even stepped into it, for among Dollys the name carried expectations and history. ... Jessops, Arthurs, Haslams and Miltons were born to walk only the beaten Dolly path to the shadowed place, live and die in keeping with those blood-line customs fiercest held.
Ree and Mom both had shouted and shouted and shouted against Harold becomeing a Milton, since Sonny was already a Jessop. ...Ree'd a thousand times wished she'd fought longer for sonny, Shouted him into an Adam or Leotis or Eugene, shouted until he was named to expect choices.”
― Daniel Woodrell

“You know, I’m very near to bein’ normal, but I just can’t get over the hump.”
― Daniel Woodrell

“I, myself, often wished to be spared the expectation of better days ahead or such.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“I'd get lost without the weight of you two on my shoulders.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“The boys crept to her side at early dark to sit around her, mournful, with their heads bowed down like they wished they knew how to pray the oldest prayers and pray her well. Harold held a cool cloth to her swollen eye. Sonny made fists and said, 'What was the fight about?' 'Me bein' me I guess.' 'How many was it?"' 'A few.' 'Tell us the names. For when we grow up.”
― Daniel Woodrell (Author)