Home > Author > Michael Lee West

Michael Lee West QUOTES

Michael Lee West QUOTES

1 " There is a sneakiness about girls that they keep hid under sweetness and pouting and crying. "

― Michael Lee West , Crazy Ladies

2 " Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.
-Joe Hill, The Preacher and the Slave "

― Michael Lee West , American Pie

3 " But it comes to me that two wrongs don't make another wrong. "

― Michael Lee West , Crazy Ladies

4 " I was tired of well-meaning folks, telling me it was time I got over being heartbroke. When somebody tells you that, a little bell ought to ding in your mind. Some people don't know grief from garlic grits. There's somethings a body ain't meant to get over. No I'm not suggesting you wallow in sorrow, or let it drag on; no I am just saying it never really goes away. (A death in the family) is like having a pile of rocks dumped in your front yard. Every day you walk out and see them rocks. They're sharp and ugly and heavy. You just learn to live around them the best way you can. Some people plant moss or ivy; some leave it be. Some folks take the rocks one by one, and build a wall. "

― Michael Lee West , American Pie

5 " There was another thing I had forgotten about the South: It was the one place on earth where an unsuspecting person could get killed by kindness. "

― Michael Lee West , American Pie

6 " This is how the soul heals. it thaws out bit by bit, the way the ground warms after a hard winter. you notive the sun or hear the whippoorwill calling across the flats. You sweep your porch, go drink coffee in the shade of the trumpet vines. You have days where you want to lay down and die, but what you learn is this: As long as there's somebody left on this earth who loves you, it's reason enough to stay alive. You don't give in to your broke heart-- you just let the wide, cracked space fill up again. "

― Michael Lee West , American Pie

7 " Now that Olive was grown, I didn't know what to do with myself. You could build your life around one single thing, like a view or a child, but that was risky. You had so much to lose. "

― Michael Lee West , She Flew the Coop: A Novel Concerning Life, Death, Sex and Recipes in Limoges, Louisiana

8 " It paid to be cultured, just as long as you didn't start growing bacteria. "

― Michael Lee West , American Pie

9 " He just knew we would find luck, but believing something don't make it true. "

― Michael Lee West , American Pie

10 " It's hard to explain your passions, but sometimes it is harder to live them. "

― Michael Lee West , She Flew the Coop: A Novel Concerning Life, Death, Sex and Recipes in Limoges, Louisiana

11 " You raise them half-decent, and they grow up and leave. They move to Miami or California-- someplace with gourmet groceries and nude beaches because you've reared them to cook good and be liberal minded. It's just the opposite with your failures-- them kids stick to your tail like a cocklebur. You'd think it would be the other way around, but it's not. No matter how old I get, this will always amaze me. "

― Michael Lee West , American Pie

12 " Everybody's always doing the same old things--- you know, doing unto others before they can do unto you. "

― Michael Lee West , American Pie

13 " The first time I saw my father-in-law's cotton, I though of the Original Sin, gardening being the root of the South's downfall. "

― Michael Lee West , She Flew the Coop: A Novel Concerning Life, Death, Sex and Recipes in Limoges, Louisiana

14 " But I knew better: No matter where you go, the past floods back. You can try like the dickens, but you can't escape fate. "

― Michael Lee West , American Pie

15 " There is something soothing about working in the yard. Planting seeds and seeing them poke green out of the dirt. And it gets you out of the house with out going too far. "

― Michael Lee West , Crazy Ladies

16 " It seemed clear that people in love lived in constant jeopardy. They were either making love or making each other crazy. "

― Michael Lee West , American Pie

17 " Gardens come and go, but I find myself getting attached to certain perennials. My tulips are bridesmaids, with fat faces and good posture. Hollyhocks are long necked sisters. Daffodils are young girls running out of a white church, sun shining on their heads. Peonies are pink-haired ladies, so full and stooped you have to tie them up with string. And roses are nothing but (I hate to say it) bitches--pretty show-offs who'll draw blood if you don't handle them just right.
-Vangie Galliard Nepper, From her
"Garden Diary," March 1952 "

― Michael Lee West , She Flew the Coop: A Novel Concerning Life, Death, Sex and Recipes in Limoges, Louisiana

18 " You have to coddle menfolks on account of their pride. "

― Michael Lee West , Crazy Ladies

19 " As my daddy said, soil is the basis of everything. "

― Michael Lee West , She Flew the Coop: A Novel Concerning Life, Death, Sex and Recipes in Limoges, Louisiana

20 " There is nothing harder than being your own rock. "

― Michael Lee West , Crazy Ladies