Bret Lott > Quotes

“I felt on my back gentle pats like fragile wings just touching me, touching me: my grandchildren's hands.”
― Bret Lott, Jewel

“Tell the truth, but understand that it is not necessarily what happened,” is one of the things she told him. “Every good story is a parable,” is another.”
― Bret Lott, Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian

“literary fiction is fiction that examines the character of the people involved in the story, and that popular fiction is driven by plot. Whereas popular fiction, I tell them, is meant primarily as a means of escape, one way or another, from this present life, a kind of book equivalent of comfort food, literary fiction confronts us with who we are and makes us look deeply at the human condition.”
― Bret Lott, Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian

“It would be inaccurate, however, to say that my childhood was untroubled. The normal fears and worries of every child were in me developed to a high degree; every day was an awesome prospect. I was uneasy about practically everything: the uncertainty of the future, the dark of the attic, the panoply and discipline of school, the transitoriness of life, the mystery of the church and of God, the frailty of the body, the sadness of afternoon, the shadow of sex, the distant challenge of love and marriage, the far-off problem of a livelihood.”
― Bret Lott

“Your momma and daddy leave you at some point, and then you are on your own.”
― Bret Lott, Jewel

“Brenda Ueland, in her book If You Want to Write, writes of her own why: “At last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had. Not to preach to them, but to give it to them, if they cared to hear it. If they did not—fine.”
― Bret Lott, Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer's Life

“men were off the road and onto our yard now, their eyes never yet looking up to us; men I couldn’t place from anywhere. I looked behind me to Momma, saw her there with a hand to her face, covering her eyes, the other hand at her throat and holding on to the collar of her dress. I turned to the sound of the men on the porch steps, felt myself backing up too. The four of them moved toward me, struggling with the burden they bore, the wool blanket seeming heavier than”
― Bret Lott, Jewel

“wet, faces white, jaws set with the weight of whatever lay in the doubled-up gray wool blanket they toted, one man to a corner, the middle sagging, nearly touching ground with each step they took. They wore only undershirts and blue jeans, all of them barefooted, their feet red with the dust of the road they’d walked. I wasn’t afraid, not even when Momma, behind me, whispered, “Oh,” then, louder, “Oh. Oh.” I heard her take one step back, then another, but there she stopped.”
― Bret Lott, Jewel

“So I had him go to work, because it occurred to me that even when your wife leaves you, you still have to show up for work.”
― Bret Lott, Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer's Life

“I saw Tory's face as I took my beating. I saw myself pulled up by Pastor from the Pearl River, wet and shaking and miserable in the Lord, Missy Cook on the bank and crying tears meant for nothing but effect, and I knew then I was no better than my grandmother, knew no matter how hard you prayed, no matter how shiny the stones in your pocket, no matter how far behind you you thought your old lives were, they were never gone. They were never more than an inch from the surface, battling every moment you breathed, each and every moment of every day fighting to rise up and take you over. And I'd lost, let those old lives win just now.”
― Bret Lott, Jewel