So Far Gone Quotes

“Technology, as he saw it, had finally succeeded in shrinking the globe, so much so that every news story felt dangerous and personal, every war a threat to his family, every firestorm, hurricane, and melting ice cap a local disaster, the seas boiling up around them, every cynical political and legal maneuver part of the same rotten fabric - and half the country somehow seeing it exactly the opposite way.”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“But I’m starting to think Thoreau might have been full of shit. If we aren’t living for others, maybe we aren’t really living.”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“As a journalist, as an American, as a rationalist, Kinnick had come to terms with the fact that 20 percent of his countrymen were greedy assholes. But then, in 2016, the greedy assholes joined with the idiot assholes and the paranoid assholes in what turned out to be an unbeatable constituency, Kinnick realizing that the asshole ceiling was much higher than he’d thought, perhaps half the country. Whatever the number, it was more than he could bear. Especially when they were in his own family.”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“it was all just part of a long sad cultural slide that he’d had the misfortune of witnessing firsthand (celebrity entertainment bleeding into government, cable TV eroding newspapers, information collapsing into a huge Internet-size black hole of bad ideas, bald-faced lies, and bullshit, until the literal worst person in America got elected president).”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“How these insane things kept happening, these eruptions of senseless violence, of anger and ignorance and greed and mendacity, like ancient fissures bubbling up under the surface, and what—we were just supposed to go on with our lives? Wake up the next day like nothing happened, like we hadn’t lost our minds? Just turn the page, to the baseball scores or the horoscopes or celebrity birthdays? (Nothing to see here, just America.)”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“I told you: that’s not how the Bible works, Rhys. It’s a living document.” “It’s not, Shane.” “Believe what you want.” Shane was getting red-faced. “But I saw a thing on-line that explained the whole deal.” He was always seeing things on-line that explained the whole deal. Or deals on-line that explained the whole thing.”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“No, this social distancing was nothing new; she and her father had been at least six feet apart for twenty years.”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“had rebuilt himself up there, following the hardest season of his life—at least until now. There were trees he would miss like old friends, and cloudless night skies, and surreal dawn light, and the tracks of visitors in the fresh snow.”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“For weeks after nearly being killed, Rhys felt like they were all still in danger. He slept poorly, was always on edge, and, at times, felt totally bereft. Post-traumatic stress, his doctor said. Kinnick wasn't sure if the doctor was diagnosing him or the world.”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“For weeks after nearly being killed, Rhys felt like they were all still in danger. He slept poorly, was always on edge, and , at time, felt totally bereft. Post-traumatic stress, his doctor said. Kinnick wasn't sure if the doctor was diagnosing him or the world”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“It, Rhys knew by now, was the elaborate and all-encompassing conspiracy to indoctrinate Americans into a Satanic liberal orthodoxy whose end goal was to subsume good Christians like Shane into an immoral, one-world socialist nightmare in which people pooped in the wrong bathrooms.”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“We all have to live through a dark season now and then.”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“black hole of bad ideas, bald-faced lies, and bullshit, until the literal worst person in America got elected president).”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“We live only as long as someone remembers us. Only as long as someone cares.”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“Technology, as he saw it, had finally succeeded in shrinking the globe, so much so that every news story felt dangerous and personal, every war a threat to his family, every firestorm, hurricane, and melting ice cap a local disaster, the seas boiling up around them, every cynical political and legal maneuver part of the same rotten fabric—and half the country somehow seeing it exactly the opposite way.”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“Technology, as he saw it, had finally succeeded in shrinking the globe, so much so that every news story felt dangerous and personal, every war a threat to his family, every firestorm, hurricane, and melting ice cap a local disaster, the seas boiling up around them, every cynical political and legal maneuver part of the same rotten fabric—and half the country somehow seeing it exactly the opposite way. He tried not reading the news on his phone, but after so long away, it was impossible, like he’d spent seven years quitting booze and then someone had assigned him his own, pocket-size twenty-four-hour bartender. Carrying around this little harbinger of doom, Kinnick was constantly reminded of the cold epiphany he’d had about the eternal nature of cruelty.”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“Kinnick had forgotten the hardest part of parenting: the realization that you can’t keep your family safe. That no matter how strong you were, or how much money you had, you could never totally shield the people you loved from the sorrows of life. Or shield yourself, for that matter. For weeks after nearly being killed, Rhys felt like they were all still in danger. He slept poorly, was always on edge, and, at times, felt totally bereft. Post-traumatic stress, his doctor said. Kinnick wasn’t sure if the doctor was diagnosing him or the world.”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“Rhys Kinnick nearly doubled over with a previously undiagnosed condition: regret. And this single, overwhelming”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“Revelations 22:10: ‘Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand.”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“was like a nosy neighbor with a constant supply of scary news, a pocketful of drip-drip dread and festering fear.”
― Jess Walter, So Far Gone