A Pale Song Quotes

“Over the years and throughout the decades of his adult life, Pap Hardy had made such a number of enemies that the local watering hole had kept a tally, crossing off each name as they moved, died, or inexplicably disappeared from the town in demonstration of Pap’s endurance and will to outlive and outstay any and all who’d opposed him. A self-will strung with desiccated cat gut. An iron mind riveted to justice. A heart enlarged by duty. e last of his kind.”
― Jonathan Epps, A Pale Song

“She sort-of batted her eyes at him. He leered a little longer. Then she rolled her eyes and turned away. But it didn’t feel like a rejection, more like a tease. If he had been more practiced in the art of male chauvinism, he may have swaggered over to her side for a bit of self-promotion. More from ignorance than from enlightenment, he smiled and nodded to the empty space in front of him, embarrassed by the confusion she had conjured just for him, and any like him, who might have been observing her moves.”
― Jonathan Epps, A Pale Song

“e intervening years seemed like an evening that was over before it had started. Some of it, a little of it, he’d remembered fondly: the parts that stuck out for the feeling of hope they had stoked to life or, as a memory, seemed like a moment when they might have done so. Most of it was a blur adding up to this uninspired minute, searching for a better version of the narrative to explain the sufferings of the current enterprise in their novel pursuit of life. A tragic turning had resolved itself into disbelief and longing, both of the past and of a future that would remove both of these people from his life completely.”
― Jonathan Epps, A Pale Song

“Memory was especially obstructed when his wife retold events her way, invariably decimating his remembrance of the same thing. Maybe all we have are idealized versions of personal history—idealistically good and idealistically bad, for narrative’s sake. Something feels good and right or bad and wrong about an experience, and it is remembered for that feeling alone—perhaps not a feeling felt at the time, but something sticks and stays, and an entire narrative, a subservient universe is constructed to remember that time, that thing, that version of life in that one particular way. No, he thought, the theory seemed too absolute to be right. Memory had no evidence. No conclusions were possible but speculation.”
― Jonathan Epps, A Pale Song

“Brian quieted but seemed lost, more than confused, mystified by his father’s voice and its modulations, looking off toward the dusty sunset behind the yard’s tree-lined enclosure. It hadn’t rained in weeks, so the dried-out detritus of the branches, the dandruff off birds’ wings, speckled the fiery blaze like pixie dust. The boy pointed toward its shimmer and said, “Tubbies!” somewhat urgently. “Tinky-Winky,” he clarified bashfully, forefinger at the edge of his mouth.”
― Jonathan Epps, A Pale Song