9 Quotes by James Hannaham

like many families, everyone wandered around like children in a funhouse—they could hardly see one another around the corners, and what they could see was completely distorted.

Y'all think a body be who you is, but it ain't nothing but a motherfucking sack of meat.

A story might help you get through your life, he said, but it doesn't literally keep you alive -- if anything, most often people who have power turn their story into a brick wall keeping out somebody else's truth, so that they can continue the life they believe themselves to be leading, trying somehow to preserve the idea that they're good people in their small lives, despite their involvement, however indirect, with bigger evils.

Everybody black knows how to react to a tragedy. Just bring out a wheelbarrow full of the Same Old Anger, dump it all over the Usual Frustration, and water it with Somebody Oughtas, all of which Bethella did. Then quietly set some globs of Genuine Awe in a circle around the mixture, but don’t call too much attention to that. Mention the Holy Spirit whenever possible.

She found it disturbing and difficult to fathom when he repeated that the starlight they saw that night had really happened hundreds of years in the past and only reached theirs eyes that day. It offended her that the past could intrude so literally on the present yet never return.

In Texas, having a vehicle meant having a life – if you walked on the shoulder, everybody could see that you’d failed in some way. That you couldn’t afford a vehicle, that your car had broken down and you couldn’t pay for a cab, that you had no friends to call. Maybe you were too weird to hitchhike.

I got all this stuff out and then I remembered that I’m a idiot, he said.

She kept seeing brothers she would think was him from far away and then get close and be like Oh, can’t be him, he got hands.

A story might help you get through your life, he said, but it doesn’t literally keep you alive – if anything, most often people who have power turn their story into a brick wall keeping out somebody else’s truth, so that they can continue the life they believe themselves to be leading, trying somehow to preserve the idea that they’re good people in their small lives, despite their involvement, however indirect, with bigger evils.