Rachel Drenning

“Grown-ups don’t look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they’re big and thoughtless and they always know what they’re doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren’t any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained. I stand and look at them long and long. — Walt Whitman, Leaves”
― Eric D. Goodman, Setting the Family Free

“I had before me an object lesson, I thought: two ways to face the world. One way as embodied by this old woman—simple, unassuming, a kind of peasant dignity, a naturalness inherent in her every move. The other, exemplified by the girl—smartness, sophistication, veneer without substance. I was conscious that I have now opted for the old woman’s way, have thrown in my lot with a creature I would have jeered at a year ago. My present trip to the mountains is indeed a trip to that wellspring of naturalness she symbolized. And I admired my choice: the correct choice, the only choice for a sensitive and moral man in my dilemma.”
― Lee Smith, Oral History

“People like to say some boys are just born bad and they grow up to be worse men, but I can’t get behind anythin’ so foolish. Boys are born clean. We’re the ones who dirty ’em, just as I believe Roy dirtied his son.”
― Kristopher Triana, The Ruin Season