25 Quotes by Beth Macy

In a windowless nook of a downtown Roanoke funeral parlor, not far from where Tess once roamed the streets, Patricia caressed the back of the scar, as if cupping a baby's head, and told her poet goodbye. It was January 2, Tess's birthday. She would have been twenty-nine. Patricia tucked the treasures of her daughter's life inside the vest--a picture of her boy and one of his cotton onesies that was Tess's favorite, some strands of Koda's hair, and a sand dollar.

You whack one [dealer], and the others just pop right up, like Whac-A-Mole

But you can't put a corporation in jail; you just take their money, and it's not really their money anyway.

The corporation feels no pain.

Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long and for truly no good law enforcement reason.

Because there is no love you can throw on them, no hug big enough that will change the power of that drug; it is just beyond imagination how controlling and destructive it is.

Janine realized that barriers to treatment were more formidable than she'd understood, as was the epidemic's scope. It wasn't just the money and limited treatment capacity that waylaid people; it was the morphine-hijacked brain, the scrambled neurotransmitters that kept people from thinking clearly or regulating their pain with nonnarcotic substances, or imagining the possibility of feeling happy again.

My dad dropped out of school in middle school, but he reads five or six books a week, and my mom reads about two.

My husband and I like to listen to books on road trips.