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Kindle Notes & Highlights
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
Behold, I make all things new.
“The South doesn’t change. You can try to hide the past, but it comes back in ways worse than the way it was before. Terrible ways.”
No matter what they found inside the school, the season of peace had passed. Now the season of pain had returned, on his watch.
“Gut feelings are full of shit,”
Chaos was king.
“God can be everywhere at the same time if he wants, but he ain’t in every building that calls itself a church. You can stand in a pulpit and call yourself a minister. I can roll around in mud and call myself a pig too. Don’t mean you was called to preach, and it don’t mean I was meant to be pork chops,”
but that was the thing about violence. It didn’t always wait for an invitation. Sometimes it saw a crack in the dam and then it flooded the whole valley.
If a man decides you aren’t his friend, then you look like a fool trying to hang on to that title.
A good leader doesn’t tolerate disrespect.
“Even the finest sword plunged into saltwater will eventually rust.”
Disrespect was a pestilence. If you let it go unchecked it would infect the entire department.
Even the people we loved kept pieces of themselves hidden away from the light.
Waiting for the world to shed tears for your pain was like waiting for a statue to speak.
“Terrible people can do good things sometimes. But they like doing the terrible things more.
But secrets can be corrosive. You hold it in, and it starts eating your insides. Pretty soon you find yourself willing to do anything to stop the pain.
Sometimes grief is love unexpressed. Other times it’s regret made flesh.
faith is never foolish,”
“faith broke my fucking heart.”
“Evil is rarely complicated. It’s just fucking bold.”
“It’s not all bullshit. You can try to fix things. Pop just used the wrong tools.” “You can’t fix everything, no matter what tools you use, Ty. Shit, you can barely fix anything. Most days you gotta just hold on and keep your head down,” Marquis said.
“We all wear masks. We have a public face and a private face and our real face.
“A man who don’t look you in the eye when you talk to him is a man that don’t respect you,” his father had told him the week before he’d left for UVA.
“But only the sinners bleed,
“Pastor, like I said, I’m not here to judge you. But you come any closer to me with that snake, I’m going to send him to hell on a bullet,” Titus said.
“Faith is a fragile thing,
“A lie can be halfway around the world while the truth is still pulling up his britches,”
“We’re all alone, Pop. We’ve just trained ourselves not to believe it,”
God walks with us in every moment of our lives. Even the darkest ones,”
“And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride,”
and no one wants to peel back the mask on a hero,”
“People keep their secrets, that’s for sure,”
Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It’s thinking of yourself less,’”
“Treat people bad, bad comes back to you,”
All I do know is violence begets more violence and all violence is a confession of pain.
Tragedy can bring some folks together. It can also tear asunder old wounds and make them weep anew.
