9 Quotes by Bob Thurber

People like to make up stories about things they don’t understand, so there are over a thousand myths about the moon. One legend claims that on the surface is everything that was wasted here on Earth: misspent time, squandered wealth, broken vows, unanswered prayers, useless tears, all the leftover bits and pieces of countless shattered lives.If you believe in that sort of thing.

Throughout my entire miserable childhood I woke at least once a night weeping from overwhelming delight. I did it hungry, I did it after beatings, I did it after the deaths of loved ones.Now you tell me if I’m crazy or if I’ve always been blessed.

Over the years our mother has beaten us with belts, shoes, rulers, extension cords, hair brushes, a wooden spoon, a fly swatter, a toilet brush, wire coat hangers, wooden coat hangers and sometimes one of our own toys. When you get whacked by your own paddleball paddle or you have to watch your sister getting spanked with a badminton racquet that she asked Santa Claus (AKA Grandma) to bring, you don't feel much like playing with those things ever again.

A new day always forgives you, unless it's raining and you wake up in jail.

Why the long face? Something happen?" "Nothing except my grandmother is still dead and my aunt moved to Sacramento and my sister just got out of a mental hospital." "Oh," Huey says. I spread my sack out, ready to load. Huey folds his handkerchief in half then in half again. I need him to check my count before I can go. "Which part of Sacramento," he says, and I shrug.

Memory in the mind of man can adapt to the worst conditions. I'll give you an example, an analogy of sorts: Each night I sop rags with beer and lay them out in careful strips. With rags soaked in beer I tease cockroaches from a crack in the baseboard. By morning they're good and drunk and I pop them into a baggy, then take them outside and throw the little buggers away.

The first thing I check once I’m inside a story is the emotional weather. Is there a storm coming? What’s the temperature, and how powerful are the winds? The difference between walking on water and sliding one’s ass across slick ice is only a matter of degree.

Time heals nothing. Wounds fester and ooze. Life drags you by a rope over rocks and stones and one day you look up, look back, and see you've been used to cut a path, mark a trail.

Meanwhile, I work the route. I don’t quit, I don’t complain. Each day I learn more than I earn. Things are going to get better.