Tomato Red Quotes

“I think one of our cardinal fuckups is how we insist that even vicious whimsical crazy shit needs to make sense, add up, belong to a reason. We lay this pain on ourselves--there must be a reason behind this horror, there must, but I ain't adequate to findin' it, and that's my fault, so torture me some more.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“I had been born shoved to the margins of the world, sure, but I had volunteered for the pits.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“I, myself, often wished to be spared the expectation of better days ahead or such.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“Nobody cares for getting belittled by a person you’ve had sex with. A person you’ve licked all over. Nobody wants to sit there and get run down too far by somebody who gives them a hard-on.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“Your palms break sweat and you sit there, needy, while your work ethic and character are available for comment from strangers you wouldn’t share a joint with at a blues festival.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“The fella had wandered over to where I could totally see him, face on, in decent light, and how he looked—well, it ain’t easy for me to say out loud.

He’s the kind of fella that if he was to make it to the top based only on his looks you’d still have to say he deserved it. Hoodoo sculptors and horny witches knitted that boy, put his bone and sinew in the most fabulous order. Dark-haired, green-eyed, with face bones delicate and dramatic both. If your ex had his lips you’d still be married. His size was somewhat smallish, but he was otherwise for certain the most beautiful boy I ever had seen. I’m afraid “beautiful” is the only word I can make work here, and I’m not bent or nothin’, but beautiful is the truth.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“A person has to show some spirit -- fate just about never shines on chickenshits.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“I got my face close up to the man still standing. I let him understand that there was oodles of danger in me; my head wobbled loose, three ticks off center. This scary face is all them such as me has to show this other world, the world in charge of our world, that musters any authority, gets any reluctant respect at all. If us lower elements didn't show our teeth plenty and act fast to bite, we'd just be soft, loamy dirt anybody could walk on, anytime, and you know they would, too, since even with a show of teeth there's a grassless path worn clear across our brains and backs.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“Taggin’ that name on you, that was like casting a curse on you. Oh, baby, your ma made a sorry, shitty prediction on your whole life and hung a name on you that would help the sorry, shitty stuff come true.”

“You ain’t bringin’ me any news.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“I hate to fall back on weird to describe them, but goofy is too weak, and strange sounds too sensible.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“I slept for over a full day, as you know, but I won’t say I rested.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“I ain’t shit! I ain’t shit! shouts your brain, and this place proves the point.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“YOU’RE NO ANGEL, you know how this stuff comes to happen: Friday is payday and it’s been a gray day sogged by a slow ugly rain and you seek company in your gloom, and since you’re fresh to West Table, Mo., and a new hand at the dog-food factory, your choices for company are narrow but you find some finally in a trailer court on East Main, and the coed circle of bums gathered there spot you a beer, then a jug of tequila starts to rotate and the rain keeps comin’ down with a miserable bluesy beat and there’s two girls millin’ about that probably can be had but they seem to like certain things and crank is one of those certain things, and a fistful of party straws tumble from a woven handbag somebody brung, the crank gets cut into lines, and the next time you notice the time it’s three or four Sunday mornin’ and you ain’t slept since Thursday night and one of the girl voices, the one you want most and ain’t had yet though her teeth are the size of shoe-peg corn and look like maybe they’d taste sort of sour, suggests something to do, ’cause with crank you want something, anything, to do, and this cajoling voice suggests we all rob this certain house on this certain street in that rich area where folks can afford to wallow in their vices and likely have a bunch of recreational dope stashed around the mansion and goin’ to waste since an article in The Scroll said the rich people whisked off to France or some such on a noteworthy vacation.

That’s how it happens.

Can’t none of this be new to you.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“I reckon I always had been huntin' for a place to plant my feet and go down swinging.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“I sat there trying to avoid certain thoughts--the kind that'll chew the meat clean out of your head if you open their cage.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“YOU WEREN’T born choking on no silver spoon, you know how it goes when you go looking for a job and you need one: You wait in the first indifferent room, ink in the forms, apply in another room with linoleum that’s waxy and squeaks and overhead lights that don’t miss a thing; then there’s the desk and the person behind it who thinks he’s an admiral, or it’s a she and she thinks she’s now in line for the throne to somewhere, and next you’re kissing ass and aw-shucksing toward the desk, telling how bad all your life you’ve been wanting to be night janitor in a chemical plant, or hog wrangler in a slaughterhouse, or pizza delivery boy, how you’ve laid awake in bed gettin’ goose bumps just from imagining how high and wide your life might someday be lived if ever you could average five dollars and forty cents an hour. But”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“You see the insides of a classier world like that and it sets your own to spinning off-balance, and a tireless gnawing discontent gets to snacking on your guts and spirit. This caliber of a place makes you want to discriminate against yourself, basically, as it reveals you as such a loser. A tiny mote of nothin’ much just here to muss up the planet these worthies lived so grandly on and wished they could keep clean of you and yours. I ain’t shit! I ain’t shit! shouts your brain, and this place proves the point. Oh,”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“Grunt work is my main calling, but I like to be dead when I do it.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“A person has to show some spirit--fate just about never shines kindly on chickenshits.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“Before all that long, you start telling those near to you that you went on interviews that turned out sorry when factually you never even made the phone call.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“Can't none of this be new to you.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“Fair?' Bev said. 'Poor baby. Look, you're really sayin' that the ways of life are glum and grim and nasty, and I guess you want to turn crybaby about that, but what's on my mind is, Whoever misled you things were otherwise, hon? What sugar factory spun you out with such silly candy-assed notions? For cryin' out loud. There's other staples I'll break to you right now, too: The sun gives life but you'd be an ash flake if you got too close to it, you got to swallow water to live but sometimes it kills you, Uncle Sam don't truly count you as any relation, and God has gone blank on your name and face.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“Sammy, wouldn’t you like to add up to something? In the future? Amount to something?”

“Naw. I just figure to roll on, stackin’ days, you know, till the day I fuck up big enough the future gets canceled. Or else all planned out for me, maybe. There’s a somewhat likely chance of that.”

“Man, Sammy, I can’t live thinking that way"

"Well,I don't think about it.”
― Daniel Woodrell , Tomato Red

“She dressed to cast her daughter in a frumpy light.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“Then she moved backwards, deeper into the shadow. All I could see was that she was barely there, like something you almost recall: the Pledge of Allegiance, your daddy’s real name.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“He’s got that ‘born to lose and lose violently’ air about him. That’s good.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“I FELL DEEP down in there, until this bright light raised me from sleep. Coming out of a pit such as that, you think the bright light could be God or a cop on patrol.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“I said, "There's ditches his size, too.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“The train had screamed closer and louder and made you comprehend why people throw rocks at them. They really tested your patience and such the way a loud-mouthed motorcyclist in a holding cell might, or a father-in-law so often does on holidays. The train went by huffing like an avalanche late for a date with a flood someplace down the line.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“inside but they did want to show their”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red