Daniel Abbott > Daniel's Quotes

“There’s something tragic about the way the moonlight hits her. It’s like tonight is hers. The black sky looking down and shaking its head. Another one lost to this wicked world.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Because the worst hurt in the world is losing your father’s love. The worst hurt in the world is watching his eyes change when he looks at you. When the marriage trudges forward but the family gets divorced. And your mother can’t stand you for telling on her. And your father resents you for being the one who found out. And they both, in their own ways, move on without you.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“He knows nothing of those dark roads she’s travelled, those dark deeds she’s done, the doors she’s locked her innocence in. That Joy Green is gone. Those keys are lost. Jackie loves a memory, that’s all, and what good did love ever do anybody anyway.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Iggy had only heard whispers, but the truth isn’t something bellowed—the truth is found in the wind, in the cracks of the concrete, in the eyes of people not saying a word, not trying to plead their case. The truth is silent and loud. And the truth about Cesar Bolden is if you cross him you come up missing, no evidence, no leads, you end up gone like you were never there at all.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“This is no quick fix. There is no Band-aid big enough for his life.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Where the concrete kept his pain at bay, the page gave his pain a place to go.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Reading is a writer's weight room.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Isaac Page was born in this shit. Joey Cane had tossed himself off of a building and landed in it.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“It’s like Cesar Bolden is two men: The one on the inside evil incarnate. The one on the outside nothing more than a walking, talking skin costume carrying all that wicked around.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“All the shame would be on display, the wind taking the stink of it far beyond the borders of Grand Rapids.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“The delivery room is cold and it has a view of the city. A view of smokestacks and snow-kissed rooftops. An industrial grid of squares that seem to go on for miles. And the snowflakes have wings. Big white butterflies suspended in air. The kind kids like to catch on their tongues.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“The city yawns and stretches. A lazy Sunday morning opens its eyes. Cesar’s always loved it down here. The water flowing beneath him. The city surrounding the ancient river. A bright green canopy of trees far off in the distance. Cesar’s always appreciated the beauty. He’s always thought it was a perfect juxtaposition of urban and God.”
― Daniel Abbott

“Our flaws are announced with a chorus of trumpets and a blinding spotlight.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“But it’s like the pulse of their marriage is gone, it’s flat lined, and a “good day” is nothing more than a jolt back to life until it flat lines again.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“When I think of my father’s eyes I’m reminded of blood. I’m reminded of hate. I’m reminded of death. How in a moment, the time it takes for an old wooden chair to soar across the room, the time it takes for a bullet to leave a gun, it can all be over. But the memory, the sound of a gunshot, or those Cheshire eyes of my father, glowing on their way out the door, those memories will echo in my mind forever.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“All she needs in this life is a chance at a better life, and to get that she works, she sacrifices, she tells her morals to shut their damn mouth, or turn the other way when shame starts poking its nose around.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Your life is fragile indeed when confronting your child is an act of bravery.”
― Daniel Abbott

“It was never a gift; it was refuge. It was his hole. A coffin he crawled into. And now it’s like the world wants to crawl in it with him. The same world he is trying to hide from.”
― Daniel Abbott

“Her mother wears it in her eyes: the grief, the regrets, the guilt. She has the body of a twenty-year-old. Eyes like she’s fifty. Dark purple circles. Wrinkle wings along the edges. This woman who used to fill her mind with princess stories, castles and dragons and magic rings that transported Lyric to other worlds. But there are no castles on the southeast side. And the only princesses in Grand Rapids are white and Dutch and oblivious to this life.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Dee readies the Ruger to fire. He looks down the sights and finds the back of the young officer’s head. This is power. To take the most precious thing a man has. To have that choice, squeeze or don’t squeeze, this young cop, this racist, this bully, with the pastor’s wife bent over the car now, her legs spread, he’s a little too thorough while he frisks her, a little too friendly with his hands, does he go home to a wife and child, does he go home feeling like he’s doing the city a service? Would he feel it when the bullet entered his skull? Would he have a second thought, a moment of regret, before the world turned black?”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“It’s the spotlight that bothers him. Isaac left the concrete for the darkness. Where he could look into his life and learn. And Miles is promising to put a spotlight on that darkness. And bring back the gaze of the world that chased him there.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“He’s only ever wanted solace. To thrive in the crevices of existence, slip into the dark cracks of life and avoid the noise. But the noise finds him, the chaos—it’s persistent beckoning toward a path that is not his own. Can never be his own. He needs seclusion. Yet every tangible ability he has requires an audience.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“Your history doesn’t define you; it creates you.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“He starts to tell Isaac about his sobriety, but something stops him. Like if he speaks the words aloud he’ll jinx it. Like he’ll piss his demons off and they’ll come lurking about, reenergized, and give him another beating.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“It’s like she’s floating inside of herself, in the dark, and whatever hasn’t already emptied inside her is emptying now...”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“The little girl who loved her father more than anything in the world is gone. Who survived has survived wolves.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“A crack rock-bottom is beneath rock-bottom. It’s a slab ceiling in every direction. A concrete box filled with guilt. During the chase you’re focused. The only thing that exists is the fix. Your mind is lost in the now, in the journey. Your life, everyone you’re hurting, everything you left behind, it all quiets down until you find this bottom, this moment of clarity. And when you find it the guilt is upon you. There’s nowhere to go. Not until the fix frees you.”
― Daniel Abbott, The Concrete

“What he said was so full of truth and lies it seemed his head would roll off his neck with the heaviness of it.”
― Sophfronia Scott, Unforgivable Love: A Retelling of Dangerous Liaisons

“People don’t think to ask for anything. They don’t want to be told no.”
― Sophfronia Scott, Unforgivable Love: A Retelling of Dangerous Liaisons

“She felt something comforting about his attentiveness; it was like having an earthbound deity watching over her, and she warmed in his sun constantly shining on her”
― Sophfronia Scott, Unforgivable Love: A Retelling of Dangerous Liaisons