Amy E. Butcher > Quotes

“I realise now that the pain Kevin felt - that night, and for nearly eighteen months beforehand, since his suicide attempt - was no less real, no less urgent, than a heart attach, a stroke, a seizure. Than the sensation of running too hard or running too fast, keeling over, grasping for air. Wishing for something to fill your lungs - to rush in and then revive you - except nothing ever does, and maybe nothing ever can.

It is unpleasant, of course, to sympathise with suicide. It is unpleasant to believe in a reality in which death is the only option. And it is problematic, certainly, to compare suicide to running, to cardiac arrest, to terminal cancer. But this is precisely the problem: There is no fair parallel that can be drawn between those who felt the dark pull of suicide and those who never have.”
― Amy E. Butcher, Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder

“Summer is, ostensibly, the safest time to drive on the Dalton Highway, truckers would later tell me. After all, it is always light, and there is no ice, no snow, no darkness to hide the sharp curves or steep summits that wind between mountains. In Prudhoe Bay's summer, truckers tell me, you can see everything, protect yourself from everything. But more truckers die that time of year than any other, because when we talk about safety on the Dalton Highway, we are always talking about illusion.

We are talking about delusion.

We are talking about what is and always is the most dangerous highway in America.”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“It’s not much different from life in a city, Chelsea explains: you wake up, you work, you eat. One life is the same as another, and a day here is a day anywhere, except there’s no bank or grocery store, no mall or Panera Bread. There’s nothing commercial, actually, and also no town or church or house. There”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“One life is the same as another, and a day here is a day anywhere, except there’s no bank or grocery store, no mall or Panera Bread. There’s nothing commercial, actually, and also no town or church or house. There”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“Looking out at the space between us, I know Joy and I both learned early in our lives that a lack of love is just as dangerous as anything else this world presents.”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“the shadow of abuse’s doubt”—the gray space”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“We are lucky,” she says, “to get to love something without violence. But when violence enters the picture, the only question is how long love lasts.”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“The luckiest people in this world are those who manage to reinvent, to live so many lives in the one life that they are given.”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“Here is a truth every Alaskan will agree upon,” Joy says as we walk in. “To be Alaskan is to love your soup. Get out your notebook. Write that down.”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“Listen. I believe we were put on this earth to love,” she says, “and I believe we love until we can’t love any longer. But the woman I was then, when we first married, when all this started? I so desperately wanted James to break the cycle, to get sober. Had I listened to Dr. Laura back then, I would’ve walked away. And I would’ve saved myself a lot of pain. A lot of heartache. But I believed I could love him out of it. And I believed it was my job to make him better.” “I have spent my whole life incarcerated by that idea.” “Of course you have!” she says. “I have, too! I think most women do! I have spent my whole life shackled to this belief, and it’s a bunch of garbage.”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“I didn’t understand then that ghosts were real—perhaps not in their embodiment, but in the way they could possess a mind.”
― Amy E. Butcher, Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder

“But I think of the brain now and it’s not that image I once imagined. I picture apartment buildings—poorly constructed and impossibly built. I picture homes stacked above other homes, people cooking omelets on broken burners, heaters plugged in and oscillating. Most days, the residents of these homes live peacefully with one another—they take showers, sing songs, and watch television—but one day, an oven’s left on, or someone forgets to unplug the iron. Or maybe that’s not it, either—maybe the people have nothing to do with it at all. But still come these chemical explosions, far too small and too complex to see, sending red and sparking embers into the drywall of our minds. “Fire!” we say. “Fire!” But still we stand there and watch it burn.”
― Amy E. Butcher, Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder