23 Quotes by Josephine Humphreys

Bobbie Ann Mason’s genius only grows stronger and wiser and funnier with every new book, and Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail is my absolute favorite so far. What an ear she has for the telling phrase, what an eye for the heartbreaking detail. These new stories are stunning.

But the moods could be contagious. He didn’t need one right now.

I read Butterfly’s Child in one day, totally hooked. It is a captivating novel of love, guilt, sin, justice – and how all these things are, in time, transformed surprisingly and inevitably.

You know a relationship has deteriorated past the point of salvage when one person detests another’s gestures.

You can’t drown yourself that simply. All good suicides involve speed and irreversibility, because the body will always move to protect itself against the sicko mind trying to do it in.

But Iris walks through the project every day. Alice asked, “Isn’t it dangerous?” Iris said, “I don’t know. I guess it could be, if you’re afraid. I’m not because it’s just something I’ve always done. I mean, if you live in it you aren’t scared of it.

Oh, the world appears to work smoothly enough, like a toy town where the only business is the constant shifting of goods and wastes. If that were all, how easy to live – buy your food, put out the garbage. But the toys and models and dolls and the world’s looks are treacherous. They teach children it will be easy. The real problem of consumption and disposal are nothing like what children are led to suspect.

The shape of his head, the set of his shoulders are a pattern she could recognize and love out of a crowd of shadows.

If she were their mother she’d teach them these things are nothing, the clothes and toys and furniture. These things fool people into thinking they must stay where the things are. Leave it all, she’d teach them, even your hopes, and all the dreams of safe, calm places. Go with what is most terrifying, the dizzying empty night and the lonely stars until night slows and you see the whole design. Always choose love over safety if you can tell the difference...