Lillian Daniel

“During an outing to Home Depot recently, I saw an old guy wearing a t-shirt that said, I don’t need a mask, I have Jesus. There’s a cutoff age to wearing graphic t-shirts with logos or messages on them. It’s ten. The guy was at the checkout buying a large roll of patterned linoleum-possibly reflooring his trailer with his government stimulus check-and, as is common in this rural region of Virginia, he was open-carrying a handgun on his right hip. The only deduction one can make from this is that protection by Jesus is limited to fending off airborne droplets and, for all other threats, you’re on your own.”
― David Thorne, Sixteen Different Flavours of Hell

“That postage stamp of a moment has always remained with me as a reminder of the innocent world in which I grew up. Or at least the innocent world in which we chose to live, perhaps to our regret. When I sat under the tree at three in the morning, an old man watching a barge and tug working its way upstream, I knew that I no longer had to reclaim the past, that the past was still with me, inextricably part of my soul and who I was; I could step through a hole in the dimension and be with my father and mother again, and I didn’t have to drink or mourn the dead or live on a cross for my misdeeds; I was set free, and the past and the future and the present were at the ends of my fingertips, filled with promise and goodness, and I didn’t have to submit to time or fate or even mortality. The party is a grand one and infinite in nature and like the music of the spheres thunderous in its presence, and I realized finally that the invitation to it comes with the sunrise and a clear eye and a good heart and the knowledge that we’re already inside eternity and need not fear any longer.”
― James Lee Burke, The New Iberia Blues

“I had no plan in mind. However, that statement is one I have always distrusted in other people, and I distrust it even more when I think it or say it myself. The unconscious always knows what the person is doing or planning. The agenda is to find the situation and the rationale that will allow the individual to commit deeds that are unconscionable. No matter how you cut it, I was back to the short form of the Serenity Prayer, known in AA and other recovery groups as Fuck It.”
― James Lee Burke, The New Iberia Blues