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1 " When a parent dies, your center of gravity is altered. Even if you lived apart from them—even if you walled yourself off from all contact—you are irrevocably lessened by their passing. Death, like gravity, respects no barriers. "
― Greg Iles , Cemetery Road
2 " There’s no meaning to be found in tragedy. Only in our response to it. "
3 " There’s no universal tally of good and evil, balancing right and wrong. The Christians with their God-has-a-plan fantasy, the Hindus with their karmic balance . . . it’s all wishful thinking. Primitive religious impulse. Linus’s damned security blanket. "
4 " To all those adults who return home to repay the debt of childhood, and find they never really left. Listen while you still can. "
5 " Given the nature of the mind, we’ll consider the dreams of sleep to be the past, never quite accurate in recollection, always made to serve our desires (except when haunting us for our sins). And the wakeful present . . . well, it, too, holds its dangers. "
6 " It’s a grim reality, but the river towns are dying in Mississippi, by a slow exsanguination of people and talent that functions like a wasting disease. "
7 " The thing about kicking open a door to the past is that sometimes what’s behind it comes out under its own power. "
8 " Southern women don’t show their pain to anybody. They aren’t raised that way. But they feel it. "
9 " Men of integrity and courage are rare these days. "
10 " came across a letter by T. S. Eliot, who I had always vaguely assumed was English. To my surprise, I discovered that Eliot had grown up along the same river I had, in St. Louis, and to a friend he wrote this about the Mississippi: I feel that there is something in having passed one’s childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London. I knew exactly what Eliot meant. "
11 " We rarely act from logic when facing the critical choices of our lives. "
12 " Posts oriented into a Woodhenge, a huge circle for astronomical observations.” “Like Stonehenge?” “Exactly like that. Or Cahokia, a similar site up in Illinois. "
13 " Marrying someone you don’t love is a sin. Because it sends both of you to hell. It destroys the other person first, but in the end it gets you, too. The magnitude of what you’ve done, the damage you’ve caused by forcing you both to live a lie. "
14 " behind them. "
15 " Oh. Does Mississippi have some kind of grave-desecration statute? I know they differ from state to state.” “Mississippi does, thank God. Anybody who comes across human remains in this state must report them. And a discovery like that stops whatever’s going on around it. Even major construction. Doesn’t matter whether the land is public or private. "
16 " something new every time.” The sound of forest insects comes from the phone. Then the screen lights up with the green sweep of my backyard. Even from the kitchen counter, I can see Jet’s naked body sitting astride mine on the patio steamer chair. “That didn’t come off Pornhub,” Paul says. “That’s the real deal. "
17 " county rescue boat to recover the corpse. Normally, I would "
18 " Reality abides in the eyes. "
19 " We’re witnessing the last gasp of white America, and it’s a lulu. Our people think the land of liberty’s their God-given country club and the caddies have forgotten their place. But revolution’s coming . . . just not the one they think. "
20 " And the country has drifted so far off course, nobody even cares about the truth anymore. "