“When I set the hook on a nice fish, Gartside asked, “How far out was he?” “Just outside the mud line,” I told him. “That’s where I thought they’d be. Don’t be a barnacle. Keep covering ground after you land him.”
― On the Run: An Angler's Journey Down the Striper Coast
― On the Run: An Angler's Journey Down the Striper Coast
“Now, in my fifties, I wake up knowing exactly where I am. My windows are open, which I remember opening last night. I am naked, and I remember taking off and throwing my dirty clothes in a hamper I bought the other day at the equivalent of a Hungarian Target here in Budapest. I wake up with eyes wide and I don’t need coffee but I enjoy the ritual. I am right where I’m supposed to be, fully aware, and shame no longer follows me like a reticent dog being belly-dragged on a leash. With this clarity comes an interest in smiles and honest laughter and the patience to suck the nutrients from all those walks of life that now tickle my senses. Morning has me in its grip and I’ll walk today, I’ll stroll to the river or up the hill or to a coffee shop to witness and engage. The world is a hard and unforgiving dark alleyway. Sometimes the riot of a bar fight becomes a communal heaven we never saw coming. For now, I’ll marvel, sufficiently stunned, at the fortune of it all. Amen.”
― From Under the Truck: A Decidedly Un-Celebrity Memoir from the Enigmatic Actor
― From Under the Truck: A Decidedly Un-Celebrity Memoir from the Enigmatic Actor
“Duane Minor’s the problem. He remains the last damnable logjam in Varley’s plan. He’s heard mutterings here and there over the past year, year and a half, from a half dozen sources: Someone’s looking for you. Two people—young guy and a dark-haired girl. Guy’s got that thousand-yard stare on him. The thralls get that look sometimes, but this one’s different.”
― Coffin Moon
― Coffin Moon
“Life at Hoover’s sang in all of us without knowing we’d ever lose the song. But the song has dimmed into a memory of an era where hardship sculpted character and the resulting music spoke in a soothing voice you never saw coming. Country blood runs clean, and clean ain’t what this world sings no more.”
― From Under the Truck: A Decidedly Un-Celebrity Memoir from the Enigmatic Actor
― From Under the Truck: A Decidedly Un-Celebrity Memoir from the Enigmatic Actor
“What I am is the Indian who can’t die. I’m the worst dream America ever had.”
― The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
― The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
J’s 2025 Year in Books
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