After Visiting Friends Quotes

“The past gives you no justice. Sentences are passed. But that doesn't mean you get justice. You can stand there forever and rail and say, 'Someone has to pay. I want what was taken from me.' But you're just going to get silence coming back at you. The past doesn't pay. We pay. And we're all free to decide when we've had enough.”
― Michael Hainey, After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story

“Fear is the trick of the enemy. And your enemy comes in many robes. But he has only one face. You know his face. You've seen it many times. You need not fear it. In your heart, you know you will triumph and you will defeat your enemy with the one weapon that you have inside you that he cannot touch--truth.”
― Michael Hainey, After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story

“And yet--we wonder.

What if how we are told it happened is not how it happened? What if the story we have been told is just that? A story. Not the truth.”
― Michael Hainey, After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story

“It's true that necessity is the mother of invention. But for those of us without fathers, there is a deeper truth - necessity is the mother of self-invention.”
― Michael Hainey, After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story

“Each of us has a creation tale - how we came into this world. And I'll add this: each of us has an uncreation tale - how our lives came apart. That which undoes us. Sooner or later, it will claim you. Mark you. More than your creation.”
― Michael Hainey, After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story

“It is our human need - to circle back to the station of our sorrow.”
― Michael Hainey, After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story

“And in that moment I think, I want to be that man. The dead man, I envy him. I want his power. The power years later, that you have over someone. Still. Your absence is greater than your presence. Presence is fleeting. Presence is easy. But absence? That's eternal. The great constant. Absence is everything.”
― Michael Hainey, After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story

“Life, I learned then, belongs not to the just but to those who do whatever they must do in order to maintain their vision of reality.”
― Michael Hainey, After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story

“So often I wonder, do all brothers end up at Kitty Hawk? Flipping a coin to write history. One will fly. The other stands slack-jawed with awe. Maybe chasing his brother. The wind in his face now. The wind that lifts his brother.”
― Michael Hainey, After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story

“My mother is the half-hugger. Whenever I see her, she can only give me a one-armed hug. It's like having that guy from "The Fugitive" for a mother.”
― Michael Hainey, After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story

“If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” —THE MAXIM OF CHICAGO NEWSPAPERMEN, ATTRIBUTED TO EDWARD “EULIE” H. EULENBERG, REPORTER AND NIGHT EDITOR, CITY NEWS BUREAU OF CHICAGO, 1927–1957”
― Michael Hainey, After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story