Dan’s Reviews > Demon Copperhead > Status Update

There were kids inside, the older ones playing basketball, Black each and all, as entirely as we up home were white, and from the looks of that street, just about as broke. All of us living where we got born maybe you have to pay extra to mingle.

People find more ways to shut up their monsters than the Bible has verses.

“it felt like church, the part where they say, remember, who died for your sins. For Dori and me, all our best people died on us early, before we had any good shot at sin. so we had catching up to do maybe that’s why nothing we ever did felt wrong.”

“A dead parent is a tricky kind of ghost. If you can make it into more like a doll, putting it in the real house and clothes and such that they had, it helps you to picture them as a person instead of just a person shaped hole in the air. Which helps you feel less like a person shaped invisible kid.”

“The hopeless wishes that won’t quit stalking you: some perfect words you think you could say to somebody to make them see you, and love you, and stay. Or could say to your mirror, same reason.”

“Any sport that’s not football around here is like vanilla. Why even eat that, if they’ve invented flavors?”

“Never be mean in anything. Never be false. Never be cruel. I can always be hopeful of you.”

“The first to fall in any war are forgotten. No love gets lost over one person’s reckless mistake. Only after it’s a mountain of bodies bagged do we think to raise the flag and call the mistake by a different name…”

“A tour of tobacco duty can feel like a season in hell, and you come back from it feeling like an army vet: proud, used up, messed up, wishing to be appreciated. And invisible.”