Linda

“Maybe Larry was wrong about the word friend, maybe he'd been shoved away from everybody for so long all he was was a sponge for the wrongs other people did.”
― Tom Franklin, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

“Well, sugar," she said, limping off, "don't be too hard on yourself. Now and again it's okay to let yourself off the hook."

But that was the trouble, wasn't it? Letting himself off the hook had been his way of life.”
― Tom Franklin, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

“He found the first skipped meals were the hardest, the hunger a hollow ache. The longer he went without eating, though, the second day, the third, the pain would subside from an ache to the memory of an ache and finally to only the memory of a memory. Until you ate you didn't know how hungry you were, how empty you'd become. Wallace's visits had shown him that being lonesome was its own fast, that after going unnourished for so long, even the foulest bite could remind your body how much it needed to eat. That you could be starving and not even know it.”
― Tom Franklin, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

“Was that what childhood was? Things rushing by out a window, the trees connected by motion, going too fast for him to notice the consequences?”
― Tom Franklin, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter