Home > Work > House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland, #4)
1 " Every drunkard has many moments of shame that live like carpet tacks in his memory, "
― James Lee Burke , House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland, #4)
2 " People were not what they said. They were not what they thought. They were not what they promised. People were what they did. When the final tally was done, nothing else mattered. "
3 " Hope was the light that allowed man to prevail in the worst of circumstances. But it also could become the narcotic of the self-deluded and the naive. "
4 " Thinking at night isn’t good for anybody. "
5 " gandy dancers "
6 " scullions "
7 " jakes, "
8 " perdition, "
9 " dipsomania, "
10 " solipsistic "
11 " ken "
12 " busthead "
13 " meretricious "
14 " THE SUN HAD just crested on the horizon like a misplaced planet, swollen and molten and red, lighting a landscape that seemed sculpted out of clay and soft stone and marked by the fossilized tracks of animals with no names, when a tall barefoot man wearing little more than rags dropped his horse’s reins and eased himself off the horse’s back and worked his way down an embankment into a riverbed chained with pools of water that glimmered as brightly as blood in the sunrise. "
15 " The gift of Morpheus brought not only sleep but oblivion. "
16 " She wondered if this were what hell was about. Not a place of punishment but of disparity. Those who had done nothing to earn their fate lived like this, while three miles away, others rode the Ferris wheel and children raised their hands joyfully to a hot-air balloon that rained down candy on their heads. "
17 " WHEN ISHMAEL WOKE, the walls of his trench were seeping water and the dawn was colder than it should have been, the sky an unnatural and ubiquitous pale color that had less to do with the rising of the sun than the passing of the night. "
18 " Then an event happened that caused him to wonder at the great folly that seemed to govern his life, namely, his attempts to plan and control his future. Most of the events that changed his life had taken place without his consent and at the time had seemed of little consequence. Our destiny didn’t lie in the stars, he told himself, or even in our mettle. It lay in our ability to recognize a gift when it was placed in your hands. "
19 " Maggie’s face darkened, as "
20 " How did a man know when it was his time? The answer was simple. There comes a moment when you no longer resist the inevitable and you accept the fact that billions have preceded you and that your death is not more important than theirs. "