John Straley > Quotes

“I didn't notice I was crying until a stewardess came by and gave me a tissue to blow my nose in. Her arm and wrist were slender and they formed a pretty arch, like the limb of a fruit tree, as she poked the tissue into my clenched fist. She didn't look at my eyes. It was a perfect gesture, an expression of indifference and concern, which is the most a drunk can ask for.”
― John Straley, The Woman Who Married a Bear

“Most old stories don't have anything to do with facts; they're the box that all the facts come in.”
― John Straley, The Woman Who Married a Bear

“Pain, no matter how slight, has a magical way of filling whatever container it finds—much like happiness but apparently more often.”
― John Straley, Cold Storage, Alaska

“For truthfully, Your Honors, if a man can love his daughter and she love him in return, with honesty and restraint, then what act, what station, can we aspire to . . . that would be more civilized than that?”
― John Straley, Baby's First Felony

“Brother. I’ll tell you,” Clive said. “I love Jesus the way Mouse loved Kelly. Unabashedly. I love Jesus like I love Duke Ellington and the great Satchmo, like I love the music of Bonnie Raitt and Joni Mitchell. I love Jesus like I love the opening paragraph of One Hundred Years of Solitude and all the books of P.G. Wodehouse. I love Jesus like Elvis loved his momma. For in Jesus is forgiveness, love, joy, and happiness.” Clive lifted his beer as if to toast them all.”
― John Straley, Cold Storage, Alaska

“you might have some funny charges, if you like.”
― John Straley, The Woman Who Married a Bear

“Anchorage is hip deep in the twentieth century. In a downtown bar you can find a deranged redneck watching a Rams game on the wide-screen TV alongside an arts administrator who is working on a production of Waiting for Godot to tour the arctic villages. Both of them will walk around the Eskimo man bundled up asleep on the sidewalk, but the arts administrator will feel an ironic sense of history.”
― John Straley, The Woman Who Married a Bear

“I realized that, like it or not, this odd group of people constituted my family, and I had things I should be doing so I could feel more worthy of them.”
― John Straley, Cold Water Burning