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Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Most of my characters aren't hillbillies anyway. Let's just call them proletariat with a disposition towards criminal activity. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Gail had a baby named Ned who was four months old, and a new look of baffled hurt, a left-behind sadness, like she saw that the great world kept spinning onward and away while she'd overnight become glued to her spot. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

MOTHER NATURE was laying down some Law out there in the bayou night, and as befits the order of things, large feathered creatures dove off high branches, swooped low and stuck talons in smaller furry meals, and bandit-eyed coons came stealthily out of hollow logs and glommed finned, scaly chow from the still, brackish shallows, while all those things that slither waited, coiled, for the passing appearance of any prey absentminded, and where the bayou waters butted against land and a screened porch overlooked the boggy stage for these food-chain theatricals, Emil Jadick sat on the arm of the couch and wrapped up a lecture that had been real Type A in tone and content. He said, And if either of you fucks up because you ain't been listenin' to me, I'll take you off the calendar myself, understood? — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I rise near dawn, make a strong cup of coffee, wander to my desk and come fully awake by reading something written the day before. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I learned my values. It's better to be poor than to be beholden. Wealth is not the object of life. You should be polite as long as possible, and when you can't be polite anymore, don't run. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Ledoux's face was pebbled with mosquito bites. Forget the Cutter's and that means every needle-nose bug in the woods spare-changing you for blood like cornerboy hustlers spotting a strung-out Kennedy trying to score on Seventh. Like you got plenty to give. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I think all regions have had their peculiarities of speech rounded off by television, radio, and people travel so much more now. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

In February of 1972, a snowstorm blew into Kansas City, and I decided to hitchhike to California. The roads were icy, snowflakes howling, and nobody would drive me to the highway, so I humped through the snow and ice and caught a ride with a concerned cop to the Kansas Turnpike. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Your palms break sweat and you sit there, needy, while your work ethic and character are available for comment from strangers you wouldn't share a joint with at a blues festival. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

The men came to mind as mostly idle between nights of running wild or time in the pen, cooking moon and gathering around the spout, with ears chewed, fingers chopped, arms shot away, and no apologies grunted ever. The women came to mind bigger, closer, with their lonely eyes and homely yellow teeth, mouths clamped against smiles, working in the hot fields from can to can't, hands tattered rough as dry cobs, lips cracked all winter, a white dress for marrying, a black dress for burying, and Ree nodded yup. Yup. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Babies don't know anything but nipples and lullabies. they splash out looks of wonder on anybody whether they merit it or not. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Megan Abbott

Reading Tomato Red-the first Daniel Woodrell novel I came upon-was a transformative experience. It expanded my sense of the possibilities not only of crime fiction, but of fiction itself-of language, of storytelling. Time and again, his work just dazzles and humbles me. God bless Busted Flush for these glorious reissues. It's a service to readers everywhere, and a great gift. — Megan Abbott

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

So much death and no coffee to be had. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

The great name of the Dollys was Milton, and ... if you named a son Milton it was a decision that attempted to chart the life he'd live before he even stepped into it, for among Dollys the name carried expectations and history ... Jessops, Arthurs, Haslams and Miltons were born to walk only the beaten Dolly path to the shadowed place, live and die in keeping with those blood-line customs fiercest held.
Ree and Mom both had shouted and shouted and shouted against Harold becomeing a Milton, since Sonny was already a Jessop ... Ree'd a thousand times wished she'd fought longer for sonny, Shouted him into an Adam or Leotis or Eugene, shouted until he was named to expect choices. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

It was in a grim room on Eddy Street that I finally opened 'A Moveable Feast.' I read it all overnight. I read it again the next day. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I guess it's ridiculously romantic, but I wanted to be a full tilt, sink-or-swim writer. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I am well aware that the writers of New York, London, and Toronto are more readily noticed, though the shadowy and potent Ozarks Literary Cabal does what it can for me, then nightly joins me for dinner and calls me 'honey.' — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Then she moved backwards, deeper into the shadow. All I could see was that she was barely there, like something you almost recall: the Pledge of Allegiance, your daddy's real name. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I was reading newspaper front pages from the 1930s, and I was taken aback. I'm not naive about American history, but I was a bit knocked off my feet by things that used to be on the front pages of newspapers. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I, myself, often wished to be spared the expectation of better days ahead or such. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

As a high-school drop-out, I knew I wanted to write, but I wasn't overly confident that I was going to be writing anything serious. I was happy enough with the idea that I could be a penny-a-word guy and survive. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

You realize you're alive while you're alive, and you better notice it then, because later, it's hard to see. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Nobody here wants to be awful," he said. He hopped a little as he zipped up. "It's just nobody here knows all the rules yet, and that makes a rocky time. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

You see the insides of a classier world like that and it sets your own to spinning off-balance, and a tireless gnawing discontent gets to snacking on your guts and spirit. This caliber of a place makes you want to discriminate against yourself, basically, as it reveals you as such a loser. A tiny mote of nothin' much just here to muss up the planet these worthies lived so grandly on and wished they could keep clean of you and yours. I ain't shit! I ain't shit! shouts your brain, and this place proves the point. Oh, — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I had been born shoved to the margins of the world, sure, but I had volunteered for the pits. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I remember all the writers I started with who I was embarrassed to be around - they were so much better than me. A lot of them are no longer writing. I guess they were better rounded and had other options. Due to social discomfort, I only had the one road. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

The old man had been tanned by the light of too many beer signs, and it just goes to show that you can't live on three packs of Chesterfields and a fifth of bourbon a day without starting to drift far too fuckin' wide in the turns. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Before all that long, you start telling those near to you that you went on interviews that turned out sorry when factually you never even made the phone call. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I FELL DEEP down in there, until this bright light raised me from sleep. Coming out of a pit such as that, you think the bright light could be God or a cop on patrol. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Boys popped wheelies that landed very near the men, then exercised their audacity by requesting quarters to stop. "I could scuff your shoes for nothin'," they said, "but when a quarter's — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

The Dolly's around here can't be seen to coddle a snitch's family
that's the always been our way. We're old blood, us people, and our ways was set firm long before hot shot baby Jesus ever even burped milk'n sh*& yellow. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

The heart's in it then, spinning dreams, and torment is on the way. The heart makes dreams seem like ideas. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Love and hate hold hands always so it made natural sense that they'd get confused by upset married folk in the wee hours once in a while and a nosebleed or bruised breast might result. But it just seemed proof that a great foulness was afoot in the world when a no-strings roll in the hay with a stranger led to chipped teeth or cigarette burns on the wrist. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

This is how sudden things happened that haunted forever. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

On his next return to this world, Duncan Cobb, oldest son, faithless cousin, cautious lover, and pal of killers, awoke infused with the lucidity born of no escape, and a mortal dose of honesty. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I know people who have, until recently, lived with dirt floors. There are people who live way back off the grid, without electricity. Not a whole lot, but quite a few. That's a choice for a lot of them. There might be a religious element in their isolation, at least with some of them. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

She dressed to cast her daughter in a frumpy light. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I'm always writing about character first. Plot, such as it is, comes from the characters. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I think there are some folks who don't particularly like what I have to say, but on the whole, the reaction has been very positive. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Stained raincoats, I reckon." "And shitpaper stuck to their shoes. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I don't think I can write a book as nihilistic as some of my early ones. They're so bleak. I don't think I would enjoy that as much anymore. You really become fixated on ways out. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I'd get lost without the weight of you two on my shoulders. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Valerie Sayers

Woodrell's storytelling is as melodic, jangly and energetic as a good banjo riff ... Sammy Barlach's story is a tragedy, but the telling of it is a pleasure. — Valerie Sayers

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Of the ready green on a blue felt top. The gentlemen who had assembled around it for an evening of high-stakes Hold 'Em were well dressed, well fed, and well heeled, but now their mouths hung loose and their poolside tans paled. "Hands on the table, guys," Jadick said. "And don't any of you act one-armed." A short man with an air of compact power, Jadick moved with brisk precision and spoke calmly. He pulled back the hammers on his archaic but awesome weapon and said, "Scoop the fuckin' manna, boys." "Check," said Dean Pugh. He and Cecil Byrne, his fellow Wingman, went slowly around the table — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I got my face close up to the man still standing. I let him understand that there was oodles of danger in me; my head wobbled loose, three ticks off center. This scary face is all them such as me has to show this other world, the world in charge of our world, that musters any authority, gets any reluctant respect at all. If us lower elements didn't show our teeth plenty and act fast to bite, we'd just be soft, loamy dirt anybody could walk on, anytime, and you know they would, too, since even with a show of teeth there's a grassless path worn clear across our brains and backs. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

No god craves weaklings. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

If you don't allow yourself to change from book to book - take chances - it turns into a dullish job with no health benefits or pension plan and only intermittent paychecks. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I always gravitate towards anything from Ireland. With Irish lit, I love the use of language, but also in many instances, the Irish writers are writing about people and circumstances that I can relate to. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I pulled the rearview down and looked at myself in the mirror for a spell, trying to spot virtues. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I've always been fascinated by the Mississippi River and the way of life in these small river towns. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

The World Ain't No Day-care Center. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I was born in West Plains, and we lived here till I was one. Then my dad needed to get a job, so we moved to the St. Louis area. I lived in St. Charles, on the Missouri River, till I was 15. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Nobody cares for getting belittled by a person you've had sex with. A person you've licked all over. Nobody wants to sit there and get run down too far by somebody who gives them a hard-on. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I stood on the cedar deck for quite a spell, eye fuckin' the night sky, trying to stare down the stars. Blood had crusted on my neck, back, in my hair, down the legs of my jeans, to where i was as spattered as a thumbless beef packer. I kept on with my close study of the higher reaches, fantasizing that a comet was due to streak by trailing a message only for me, spelled out clearly and printed huge. Some epigram from far away out there that'd clue me in on how to feel after killing a man — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I was basically raised to look for chances to get even with several families for stuff that happened 30 or 40 years before I was born. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I'm very attracted to poetry for all the reasons someone likes poetry. The notion of compression seems to fit my personality. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

YOU WEREN'T born choking on no silver spoon, you know how it goes when you go looking for a job and you need one: You wait in the first indifferent room, ink in the forms, apply in another room with linoleum that's waxy and squeaks and overhead lights that don't miss a thing; then there's the desk and the person behind it who thinks he's an admiral, or it's a she and she thinks she's now in line for the throne to somewhere, and next you're kissing ass and aw-shucksing toward the desk, telling how bad all your life you've been wanting to be night janitor in a chemical plant, or hog wrangler in a slaughterhouse, or pizza delivery boy, how you've laid awake in bed gettin' goose bumps just from imagining how high and wide your life might someday be lived if ever you could average five dollars and forty cents an hour. But — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Ree sat chilled inside her squat tent. To occupy her mind, she decided to name all the Miltons: Thump, Blond, Catfish, Spider, Whoop, Rooster, Scrap ... Lefty, Dog, Punch, Pinkeye, Momsy ... Cotton, Hog-jaw, Ten Penny, Peashot ... — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Ree Dolly stood at the break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries and saw meat. Meat hung from trees across the creek. Carcasses hung pale of flesh with fatty gleam from low limbs of saplings in the side yards. Three halt haggard houses formed a kneeling rank on the far creekside and each had two or more skinned torsos dangling by rope from sagged limbs, venison left to the weather for two nights and three days so the early blossoming of decay might round the flavor, sweeten that meat to the bone. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Pine trees with low limbs spread over fresh snow made a stronger vault for the spirit than pews and pulpits ever could. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Just because it's got a gun doesn't make it a crime novel, and just because there's a horse doesn't make it a western. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I'd just lie around all day. It's the chemo, the poison they pump into you. Sometimes I'd be walking across the room and think, 'There it is; I got to rest.' And I had to, right then. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I think my grandmother Woodrell was most responsible for my becoming a writer. She wasn't quite literate, but was very proud that she attended school as far as the third grade. She worked as a maid, housekeeper and cook. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

You want to hear an agent scream, say, 'I'm thinking about doing a collection of short stories set in the Ozarks.' — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Mike Rondeau, a tall drink of a man sloshed into a squat glass, with a belt that could double as a lasso and a volume of ambitious lies that he called his life, came in the door and laughed. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I can't say that dropping out of school at 16 to join the Marines was my best idea. On the other hand, maybe it was. Who knows? — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

This happens to me all the time: I think I'm working on one thing, but this other thing, whether I want it to or not, keeps coming through. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

You know, I'm very near to bein' normal, but I just can't get over the hump. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

When I left Iowa, I definitely never wanted to stand in front of a group of academics again and see if they approved of me. I made up my mind to take my work to the actual reading public. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I always loved the verve and vivacity of pulp and I kind of merged it with my own interest in family stories. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Shade said as he stepped down the hall, "is another of the 'eternal boy's' major concerns, if you can believe it." The officer sat down and swung his feet to the desktop. "I probably could," he said, "but I think I'll pass." Blanchette leaned on Shade's arm, a pantomime of crumbling health, and swatted at his — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

He was almost twenty and Ree knew most girls would call him handsome or dreamy or some such. Sandy hair, blue eyes, put together strong, with bright teeth and one of those smiles. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

When I started to be a writer, I was not going to run the risk of boring you. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Moons of ache glowed in spaces of her meat and when she moved the moons banged together and stunned. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

This new spot for life might be but a short journey as a winged creature covers it, that is often said, but, oh, Lord, as you know, I had not the wings, and it is a hot, hard ride by road. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Earned a bachelor's at 27, then an M.F.A. that is still completely unused and in mint condition, never taken out of the box. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Fading light buttered the ridges until shadows licked them clean and they were lost to nightfall. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I have tried to outline, but all that seems to guarantee is that the book will not much resemble the outline, so I long ago stopped. I never really know where a book is going, and each new book has it's own voice - and I have to be available to hear it. That's what can be frustrating between novels - the way I wrote any previous book won't work with this one. I'll make notes, do little sketches of characters or places, but every new book has to be discovered, and maps to the older books won't help much. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I don't want to be callous about it, but we all seemed to get over the Oklahoma bombing pretty quickly, and we're never going to get over 9/11. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

He's got that 'born to lose and lose violently' air about him. That's good. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I had bill collectors chasing me. We were skipping from town to town, not leaving forwarding addresses. The agent couldn't find me when he sold my book. He finally found me. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I joined the Marines the week I turned 17, and that led to a few experiences that might qualify as adventure - eye of the beholder. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I had gone to enlist in the Navy, but they had a long waiting list and no need for high-school dropouts. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I tell the story by feel most of the time, and I am not much given to labyrinthian digressions but seem to be naturally drawn to compression and pace, and the feelings come about on their own. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

My father was a salesman, and I always said I wouldn't be one. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I was thinking of my father's family. I can find their graves, but not that much about them. They didn't do anything notable enough to be in the records of newspapers. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

Taggin' that name on you, that was like casting a curse on you. Oh, baby, your ma made a sorry, shitty prediction on your whole life and hung a name on you that would help the sorry, shitty stuff come true."
"You ain't bringin' me any news. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

It's not always to the benefit of the story to have it so preordained. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I didn't really expect to be coming to the Oscars. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

In the morning we shed our blue sheep's clothing. Our border shirts came out of satchels and onto our backs. We preferred this means of dress for it was more flatout and honest. The shirts were large with pistol pockets, and usually colored red or dun. Many had been embroidered with ornate stitching by loving women some were blessed enough to have. Mine was plain, but well broken in. I can think of no more chilling a sight than that of myself all astride my big bay horse with six or eight pistols dangling from my saddle, my rebel locks aloft on the breeze and a whoopish yell on my lips. When my awful costume was multiplied by that of my comrades, we stopped feint hearts just by our mode of dread stylishness. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I said shut up once already, with my mouth. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

When the mushrooms took hold she sensed some of the gods calling to her from inside her own chest and followed their urging outside into the yard and up the sunny slope into the trees. She felt all gooey, gooey with the slobbered love of various gods gathered within, and smiling full-time went about the woods looking to collect butterflies and pet them until they gave milk, or maybe roll in the dirt until she felt China through her skin. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

For a long time, I didn't think I wanted to live in the Ozarks or write about the region. It seemed to be a sure recipe for obscurity, and to be obscure was not my conscious ambition. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Joe R. Lansdale

I know the Pollock novel. Read it last year and liked it. Daniel Woodrell is awesome. I especially like the book Winter's Bone, and the film made from it. Larry Brown is terrific, all his work, but for me Joe in particular, also a good film, but a much better novel. — Joe R. Lansdale

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

It's called 'The Outlaw Album,' not 'The Ozarks Album.' These are stories that delve into different kinds of outlawry, from criminal acts to interior, or psychological, outlawry. The book is not meant to be a tapestry of the Ozarks. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Daniel Woodrell

I felt like a number of things in me as a writer just clicked. — Daniel Woodrell

Woodrell Quotes By Sarah Hall

Daniel Woodrell has made a name as a master of prose with personality - a densely descriptive, gamey form of storytelling, one might say traditional storytelling - of late rather an unfashionable mode. — Sarah Hall