The River We Remember Quotes

“OUR LIVES AND the lives of those we love merge to create a river whose current carries us forward from our beginning to our end. Because we are only one part of the whole, the river each of us remembers is different, and there are many versions of the stories we tell about the past. In all of them there is truth, and in all of them a good deal of innocent misremembering.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“The most frightening thing we do in our lives is to love.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“We all die, but some of us—those who are blessed or maybe just lucky—have the opportunity before that end to be redeemed. We can let go, forgive others, and also forgive ourselves for the worst of what we are or have been.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“In the end, a soldier kills because all the circumstances of a moment drive him to it. It isn’t for freedom or God or for the people back home. It’s because he has no choice but to kill. And in that moment, he’s not thinking of it as a good thing or a bad thing. He’s not thinking about ethics. He’s thinking about keeping himself alive and keeping his comrades alive. And in all that mess, the only thing he wants is for it to end and for him to be alive to see that end.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“There had been a time, a very long time, when there'd been no humans on this land, and Graff believed that someday it would be that way again. All that men had done to prove their ownership, their mastery, would be undone. In time as it was reckoned by humans, this might be a long while coming, but it would come, In the reckoning of the earth, it would take place in less than a heartbeat.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“More than anything else, we're made of mistakes. But you know what? We always have a second chance.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“Death is as ordinary in this world as birth or breathing. Though we may fear that journey and what awaits us there, it’s a revelation that will come to us all someday.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“Charlie, you and I both know that justice isn't always about what the law dictates. Hell, maybe it never is.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“Even after the sun had set and the sky had gone from bruised purple to an indigo full of stars, they talked. There beside the silent flow of the Alabaster River, they split open the darkness inside both of them in which too many secrets had lain hidden”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“war does something vile and irreparable to the human spirit, leaves thick scars on the soul.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“Creasy, when she’d defended him, was a man like used motor oil. If you tried to get a grip on him, he slipped through your fingers, leaving you with the feel of grit and dirt and a desire to wash yourself clean.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“You know how big the human heart is?” Graff balled his hand into a fist. “About that size. I continue to be amazed at how much hate such a small thing can hold, even in people who think of themselves as decent and Christian.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“People who make other people unhappy are generally pretty unhappy themselves,” she said. He gave a small nod of agreement, then turned to her. “What about people who make other people happy? That’s you, Angie.” “Well, I’m glad you think so.” “Why?” he asked. “Why am I glad?” “No, why are you so happy?” “Maybe it’s because I know how blessed I am.” “That must be something,” he said.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“Very early in his life, Scott Madison had come to believe that loneliness was the normal condition of people, and he didn’t think of it, his own or that of others, as a terrible thing.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“OUR LIVES AND the lives of those we love merge to create a river whose current carries us forward from our beginning to our end. Because we are only one part of the whole, the river each of us remembers is different, and there are many versions of the stories we tell about the past. In all of them there is truth, and in all of them a good deal of innocent misremembering. Charlie Bauer still sometimes thinks”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“People who make other people happy are generally pretty unhappy themselves," she said.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“When you saved that girl, I told you that you’d received a gift. The gift is like this star at the center of the cottonwood. It’s inside you now. Someday, when you need it, it will come out, like the stars when the wind shakes the cottonwood trees, and it will shine for you, well and truly.” The boy”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“[Bluestone's] dark eyes, which had been focused on the blue sky outside the cellblock window, shifted to Wicklow. "A lot of white folks in these parts, their ancestors were killed in what your history books call the Great Sioux Uprising. In schools, they teach that the Dakota were savages, that we rose up against our neighbors and slaughtered them."
"The Sioux--Dakota--here probably have ancestors killed by whites."
"But the Dakota didn't win that war. In the end, a war is always about who wins. My people had no chance. It doesn't matter that they had every reason to be angry and desperate. They'd been lied to, cheated, starved, their land and everything on it stolen. So they fought. And they lost. But the history has been written by the whites. In Black Earth County, it's the whites who believe they were set on unfairly, cruelly, and have the right to carry all that hatred in their hearts.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“The woman looked up at the sky, which was beginning to salt with stars”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“Death is as ordinary in this world as birth or breathing. Though we fear that journey and what awaits us there, it's a revelation that will come to us all someday”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“Amazing how in the middle of hell something as simple as dawn can be the most beautiful thing imaginable.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“Although she had never been a beauty, she’d finally learned to see what was beautiful about her, and she tried to look at other people with the same forgiving eye, and this had made a vast difference in how she embraced what life offered her.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“People in Black Earth County didn’t think of women as lawyers. Or doctors or bankers. They could be teachers or nurses. Or wives and mothers. But competing on a playing field that was traditionally male made Charlie an item of consternation and even disapproval. Which she always thought odd, considering that not many years earlier, when men on that prairie were either giving up or going crazy because of the hard work the land demanded, it was often the iron-backed pioneer women who endured and saved the homesteads. So not only did the disapproval in Black Earth County not bother her, but Charlie rather reveled in it. The”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“He taught me to pay attention.” “To what? “Everything. The beauty of it all. The way the earth smells wet and raw when it’s first turned in the spring or after a summer rain. How the wind bends a field of tall grass into a moving sea. The creak and moan of trees, like they’re talking to one another, or to us if we listen. Everything about the river, the Alabaster. I grew up fishing it, swimming it, watching it flood the fields again and again. My father had great respect for that river.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“Charlie, you and I both know that justice isn’t always about what the law dictates. Hell, maybe it never is.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“Finally, she wrote: The most frightening thing we do in our lives is to love.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“he had harvested an abundance of happiness, which he’d stored in the silo of his heart.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“when there’d been no humans on this land, and Graff believed that someday it would be that way again. All that men had done to prove their ownership, their mastery, would be undone.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“In the pale illumination from the single flame, her breasts were so beautiful that Brody’s breath caught and he whispered, “God, Garnet.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember