Michael Lee West Quotes & Sayings

Lord, I don't understand it, but when a person does something wrong, it never feels wrong until later. It's never as evil as you'd imagined. — Michael Lee West

A tofu birthday cake dosn't wreak a marriage; but if you cut the tofu into lewd shapes, you are probably asking for trouble. Looking back, I think we stopped being kind to each other. And we became competitors ...
Love cannot be sustained under these conditions, any more that yeast will proof in cold water. — Michael Lee West

Now that Olive was grown, I didn't know what to do with myself. You could build your life around one single thing, like a view or a child, but that was risky. You had so much to lose. — Michael Lee West

Gardens come and go, but I find myself getting attached to certain perennials. My tulips are bridesmaids, with fat faces and good posture. Hollyhocks are long necked sisters. Daffodils are young girls running out of a white church, sun shining on their heads. Peonies are pink-haired ladies, so full and stooped you have to tie them up with string. And roses are nothing but (I hate to say it) bitches
pretty show-offs who'll draw blood if you don't handle them just right.
-Vangie Galliard Nepper, From her
"Garden Diary," March 1952 — Michael Lee West

You have to coddle menfolks on account of their pride. — Michael Lee West

He just knew we would find luck, but believing something don't make it true. — Michael Lee West

It's hard to explain your passions, but sometimes it is harder to live them. — Michael Lee West

You can't see reality. You never could: You just distort the truth until you end up with a version you can live with. — Michael Lee West

I wondered if small town people became smaller in order to fit. Perhaps they had to. — Michael Lee West

You not trapped girl. Not unless you nailed to the floor. — Michael Lee West

But I knew better: No matter where you go, the past floods back. You can try like the dickens, but you can't escape fate. — Michael Lee West

There was another thing I had forgotten about the South: It was the one place on earth where an unsuspecting person could get killed by kindness. — Michael Lee West

But it comes to me that two wrongs don't make another wrong. — Michael Lee West

I was tired of well-meaning folks, telling me it was time I got over being heartbroke. When somebody tells you that, a little bell ought to ding in your mind. Some people don't know grief from garlic grits. There's somethings a body ain't meant to get over. No I'm not suggesting you wallow in sorrow, or let it drag on; no I am just saying it never really goes away. (A death in the family) is like having a pile of rocks dumped in your front yard. Every day you walk out and see them rocks. They're sharp and ugly and heavy. You just learn to live around them the best way you can. Some people plant moss or ivy; some leave it be. Some folks take the rocks one by one, and build a wall. — Michael Lee West

She, if anyone, was on a hell-bound train. I mean, if you're masquerading as a do-gooder, why not go all the way? — Michael Lee West

You raise them half-decent, and they grow up and leave. They move to Miami or California
someplace with gourmet groceries and nude beaches because you've reared them to cook good and be liberal minded. It's just the opposite with your failures
them kids stick to your tail like a cocklebur. You'd think it would be the other way around, but it's not. No matter how old I get, this will always amaze me. — Michael Lee West

I should not have lied, but I did. Later, those lies came back to haunt me, bread cast on the water, tenfold. — Michael Lee West

This is how the soul heals. it thaws out bit by bit, the way the ground warms after a hard winter. you notive the sun or hear the whippoorwill calling across the flats. You sweep your porch, go drink coffee in the shade of the trumpet vines. You have days where you want to lay down and die, but what you learn is this: As long as there's somebody left on this earth who loves you, it's reason enough to stay alive. You don't give in to your broke heart
you just let the wide, cracked space fill up again. — Michael Lee West

The first time I saw my father-in-law's cotton, I though of the Original Sin, gardening being the root of the South's downfall. — Michael Lee West

There is nothing harder than being your own rock. — Michael Lee West

It seemed clear that people in love lived in constant jeopardy. They were either making love or making each other crazy. — Michael Lee West

As my daddy said, soil is the basis of everything. — Michael Lee West

It paid to be cultured, just as long as you didn't start growing bacteria. — Michael Lee West

There is a sneakiness about girls that they keep hid under sweetness and pouting and crying. — Michael Lee West

Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.
-Joe Hill, The Preacher and the Slave — Michael Lee West

There is something soothing about working in the yard. Planting seeds and seeing them poke green out of the dirt. And it gets you out of the house with out going too far. — Michael Lee West

Everybody's always doing the same old things
you know, doing unto others before they can do unto you. — Michael Lee West