18 Quotes by Allen Eskens

Tufts of hair stuck out of my head in all directions, like I’d been cow-licked by a drunken heifer.

What if I was wrong? What if there was no other side. What if, in all the eons of eternity, this was the one and only time that I would be alive. How would I live my life if that were the case?

Now, as I walk back to him, carrying these rocks, I also carry the weight of Jenni’s words to me: “I’d never want you to become someone bad because of me”. That memory presses me down and threatens to buckle my knees more than any bundle or rocks ever could.

I drew in a breath of crisp December air and stood perfectly still, savoring the feel, the sound, and the smell of the world around me, sensations that would have passed by me unnoticed had I never met Carl Iverson.

No matter how hard you try, there are some things you just can’t run away from.

You put enough like-minded idiots in a room, and pretty soon their backward way of thinking starts to take on an air of legitimacy.

I always expected the world to someday figure out that I didn’t belong here, that I had risen far above my ditch-digging station, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when it all started falling apart.

But memories aren’t like photographs; they can’t halt the passing of time. Instead, they lay like footsteps along a path each determined by the step that came before and colored by the ones to follow.

That you understand how wrong it is to judge someone before you know their whole story.