Tiffany McDaniel Quotes & Sayings

You can imagine anything you want in the dark. You can imagine your father loves you, you can imagine your mother is not disappointed, you can imagine that you are...significant. That you mean somethin' to someone. That's all I ever wanted, Fielding. To matter. That is all I've ever wanted. — Tiffany McDaniel

If looks were to be believed, he still was just a boy. Something of my age, though from his solemn quietude, I knew he was old in the soul. A boy whose black crayon would be the shortest in his box. — Tiffany McDaniel

You're just a boy. A boy holds a gun but cannot fire it, even when he knows it is the right thing to do. A god would never hold the gun in the first place. So you're a manintraining. And on the day you are asked to hold the gun once more, you will have to decide whether to stay the child ... or finally become the man. — Tiffany McDaniel

You know where the name hell came from." He crossed his hands on his lap. "After I fell, I kept repeating to myself, God will forgive me. God will forgive me. Centuries of repeating this, I started to shorten it to He'll forgive me. Then finally to one word, He'll. He'll.
"Somewhere along the way, I lost that apostrophe and now it's only Hell. But hidden in that one word is God will forgive me. God will forgive me. That is what is behind my door, you understand. A world of no apostrophes and, therefore, no hope. — Tiffany McDaniel

Sometimes this world is like red fences in the snow. There ain't no hiding who we really are. — Tiffany McDaniel

As we walked home, I knew from far away the trees would've looked nice, the grass would've looked green, and we would've looked like just a couple of boys walking home, armed with Midwest love and Bible Belt morals.

But up close, the trees were scorched, the grass was dead, and the boys were on the verge of tears with the belts of those morals tightening around their necks, threatening to hang them if they dared step off the stool of masculinity. — Tiffany McDaniel

Don't you wanna be a great baseball player?" He sighed back into the wall. "I want to be a great man, Fielding." And so we stand, proved of our existence by those who see us. And how did I see Grand, how did any of us, but as the one who would be great at this and that, as long as it was baseball and girls. He always had to be what we wanted him to be first. He existed only by proxy to our dreams of him. — Tiffany McDaniel

I shot all the bad, but damn it all, I shot all the good as well. That's something you never quite come back from. That's something that's a fresh pain every day. — Tiffany McDaniel

A foolish mistake, it is, to expect the beast, because sometimes, sometimes, it is the flower's turn to own the name. — Tiffany McDaniel

I once heard someone refer to Breathed as the scar of the paradise we lost. So it was in many ways, a place with a perfect wound just below the surface. — Tiffany McDaniel

I know the sins of everyone who comes to hell. That's part of my misery. To know and feel theirs. — Tiffany McDaniel

Pain is our most intimate encounter. It lives on the very inside of us, touching everything that makes us. It claims your bones, it masters your muscles, it reels in your strength, and you never see it again. The artistry of pain is its content. The horror of it is the same. — Tiffany McDaniel

Breathed was the combination of flower and weed, of the overgrown and the mowed. It was Appalachian country, as only Southern Ohio can be, and it was beautiful as a sunbeam in waist-high grass. — Tiffany McDaniel

Being the devil made him important. Made him visible. And isn't that the biggest tragedy of all? When a boy has to be the devil in order to be significant? — Tiffany McDaniel

I'm the devil. No one tells me when to stay and when to leave. But it sure is nice to be wanted. I tell you, Fielding, it sure is nice to be wanted in this very place. — Tiffany McDaniel

YOU WERE MY FAVORITE THING
AND IN IMAGINATION YOUR DEATH WILL NOT EXIST
IT IS ALL 'AS IF' FROM NOW ON
AS IF YOU ARE NOT GONE
YOU WILL BE THE GIRL BESIDE ME
NEVER MORE THAN A HEARTBEAT LENGTH AWAY
THE WOMAN WHO WILL BE THE HILL OF MY BED
A CLIMB TO THE TOP
AND SUCH VIEWS TO MAKE LITTLE THINGS OF
LITTLE US THAT WILL BE PART YOU AND PART ME
AND WHOLE IN THOSE TWO THINGS
AS IF YOU ARE NOT GONE
AND WILL BE WITH ME TO GET THE WRINKLES
THE WHITE HAIR
THE SPINE SHAPED LIKE A ROCKING CHAIR
AS IF YOU ARE NOT GONE
AND SO WILL HAVE THE LOVE OF GOING IN MY ARMS
WARM AND WITH ME
YES, YOU ARE MY FAVORITE THING
YOU ALWAYS WILL BE. — Tiffany McDaniel

Don'tcha wanta live forever?"

"I'm the devil. I am already forever. — Tiffany McDaniel

Dear Mr. Devil, Sir Satan, Lord Lucifer, and all other crosses you bear,
I cordially invite you to Breathed, Ohio. Land of hills and hay bales, of sinners and forgivers.
May you come in peace.
With great faith,
Autopsy Bliss — Tiffany McDaniel

It would do none of us any good, runnin' an evil off like we're too weak and too scared to take care of our own problems. As if we zero in bravery and sword. We can't forget, we are the lords of our own 'round here, and we alone hiss back the serpent. — Tiffany McDaniel

People always ask, Why does God allow suffering? Why does He allow a child to be beaten? A woman to cry? A holocaust to happen? A good dog to die painfully? Simple truth is, He wants to see for Himself what we'll do. He's stood up the candle, put the devil at the wick, and now He wants to see if we blow it out or let it burn down. God is suffering's biggest spectator. — Tiffany McDaniel

It's just sometimes you don't say nothin' for so long, you forget why ya shut up in the first place. — Tiffany McDaniel

That is the tragedy of losing an older brother. He stays still. You keep on and one day become the older one. It's unnatural, that reversal. It's the thing that keeps the family from ever being whole again. — Tiffany McDaniel

And not one of you is to use the N-word that horrid woman said tonight to Sal. I swear I wish people were forced to make a list of names and recite them every time they use that word. "A list of the names of every black man, woman, and child hated,beaten, killed for the color of their flesh. It should be law - by God, it should be law - that if you say that word, you must then say their names. "No one wants to say one word and then realize it means so many more. — Tiffany McDaniel

The snake has had its victories over me. And in its victories I am no longer sweet nor gentle. — Tiffany McDaniel

If the devil was going to come, I expected to see the myth of him. A demon with an asphalt shine. He'd be fury. A chill. A bad cough. Cujo at the car window, a ticket at the Creepshow booth, a leap into the depth of night. — Tiffany McDaniel

Sometimes the things we believe we hear are really just our own shifting needs. — Tiffany McDaniel

What did I say in that one word of six letters, sometimes only three? I supposed I said, I don't want you to be gay. I don't want you to be happy, and no it isn't fine that you want to be with a man. Faggot. Isn't that what that one word is supposed to mean? Faggot? One word that said I was scared. That I didn't understand. — Tiffany McDaniel

I look back and think of all the ways he wasn't the devil in that moment. The devil would break a dog's neck, not cradle it in his own. The devil would have a mouth comparable to a crate of knives, not a mouth with teeth that held the curves of marshmallows. I think of all the devils I've seen in my long life. I know now how brief the innocent, how permanent the wicked. I — Tiffany McDaniel

The heat came with the devil. It was the summer of 1984, and while the devil had been invited, the heat had not. It should've been expected, though. Heat is, after all, the devil's name, and when's the last time you left home without yours? — Tiffany McDaniel

The moment I fell, my wings wilted like roses left too long in the vase. The misery of the bare back is to live after flight, to be the low that will never again rise. "To live on land is to live in a dimming station, but to fly above, everything sparkles, everything is endlessly crystal. Even the dry dirt improves to jewel when you can be the wings over it. "To be removed from flight is to be removed from the comet lines, the star-soaked song. How can I go on from that? How can I be something of value when I've lost my most valuable me? Land is my forever now, my thoroughly ended heaven. No sky will have me, no God either. "I am the warning to all little children before bedtime. Say your prayers, be done with sin, lest you become the devil, the one too sunk, no save will have him." Dad — Tiffany McDaniel

No one ever said you've got to prepare to be hated. You've got to prepare for the yelling and the anger. You have got to prepare how to survive being the guilty one, even in innocence. — Tiffany McDaniel

A snake that could harm you, you don't have much choice to kill. You wouldn't be able to leave a cobra in your sock drawer. But a snake that is no threat will greatly define the man who decides to kill it anyways. — Tiffany McDaniel