James Snyder > Quotes

“what I do know is, when you fight yourself, no matter who wins, you lose.”
― James Snyder, Desolation Run

“The mountains above them came more and more into view. They were black misshapen heaves of the earth’s volcanic crust forced skyward, jutting and cracked and forbidding. They seemed lifeless as a moonscape, though seemingly filled with a dark living wonder that made them seem they would start to breathe at any moment. They offered no welcome, even as they seemed luring and magnetic in their presence. As if they held secrets beyond care or revelation, though beckoning and unforgettable. Bewitchment filled the cold desert air.”
― James Snyder, Desolation Run

“but I like to get away from everyone. I like to be by myself mostly. That’s always easier.”
― James Snyder, The Beautiful-Ugly

“I ain’t forgot. Anyway, my problem’s never been the forgetting, but the remembering.”
― James Snyder, Desolation Run

“Instead, she could stay there, surrounded by her sweet, odd friends, and forget everything that had happened, or might happen, and have her own fragile and empty peace of mind,”
― James Snyder, The Beautiful-Ugly

“when you die, all the there’s go with you.”
― James Snyder, The Beautiful-Ugly

“she was tired of not knowing, and not having,”
― James Snyder, The Beautiful-Ugly

“Not being a part of them felt better.”
― James Snyder, The Beautiful-Ugly

“Art can only assert itself when real life stands aside a moment.”
― James Snyder, The Beautiful-Ugly

“Isaiah 45:7.” Now he was made to swallow, thinking back. “‘I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.”
― James Snyder, Desolation Run

“Wild animals, she had seen, used that power to survive. They didn’t know bad or good; they just knew starving made you weak, which was the same thing as dying, sooner or later. But menfolk were different, and that was the terrible burden they carried. She decided it was just plain easier to do and be bad than good, so those weak-souled and evil-tempered leaned toward that, while the better menfolk, like Doc, leaned the other”
― James Snyder, Desolation Run

“Then there was that awful feeling again that nothing that was happening to her, or even what she was thinking, was real.”
― James Snyder, The Beautiful-Ugly

“It was too much. Just too much. She felt like a starving dog trapped inside a meat factory.”
― James Snyder, The Beautiful-Ugly

“forever in moody meditation with those vague drifting airs”
― James Snyder, The Beautiful-Ugly

“What you need to understand is that there are things in life besides what you want and what Jesus wants.”
― James Snyder, The Beautiful-Ugly

“she enjoyed her freedom to choose things, to have control of things, not to take on commitments she couldn’t discard, like a bad dress, at a moment’s notice. That, and just the way she looked at things. Like fashion. Which was always new. Always changing.”
― James Snyder, The Beautiful-Ugly

“When she turned eight and was in the Fourth Grade, she began to notice things.”
― James Snyder, The Beautiful-Ugly

“Narrow slippery trails crisscrossed it from every direction, all leading down to Junior Creek, which flushed the bottoms on down into the Tombigbee River,”
― James Snyder, Desolation Run

“I ain’t afraid of dying. Shit I’ve been through, dying is just one more page in a long bad book.”
― James Snyder, Desolation Run

“When you are finally purged, brought to nothing, at ground zero, all is exposed, all is laid bare, nothing hidden—then do you know yourself. Self-knowledge as purpose for this ordeal, this journey, we call existence.”
― James Snyder, The Beautiful-Ugly

“She could feel his fingers, first one, then another, like little crooked worms, inside her.”
― James Snyder, The Beautiful-Ugly

“backgrounds, shadowy rock and tree, and chasing him up and down soot-gray hills and dales for all he was”
― James Snyder, Desolation Run