Dark Days Quotes

“My alcoholism is in no way any sort of excuse for any of my past behaviors. Just because I quit drinking, my life was not suddenly transformed into a tabula rasa-if I have wronged someone, drunk or not, then the responsibility for this lies squarely with me. And I must do my best to set things square with that person. ...
....And just because I am sober now does not mean anyone else should care. I do not deserve a cookie for finally trying to act like a decent human being.”
― D. Randall Blythe, Dark Days: A Memoir

“I feel a deep need to listen to the remnants of history’s saddest songs, to keep their mournful melody alive on my lips and in my heart. My psyche craves the lessons humanity’s blood-rusted fissures have to carve into my soul, and maybe, just maybe, if I soak up enough of them, one day I will begin to make sense of today’s ongoing global hostilities.”
― Randy Blythe, Dark Days: A Memoir

“Injustice always prevails when the people blindly accept the dictates of those in power, whether those rulers were elected or seized their positions by the sword.”
― D. Randall Blythe, Dark Days: A Memoir

“Discipline will save you when the chips are down. Discipline will temper you and turn you into steel when your ass is burning alive in the flames of life’s hard times-furnace.”
― Randy Blythe, Dark Days: A Memoir

“When everything that you know and love is taken from you, the smallest, most mundane things, stuff that you normally pay no attention to, like a random alley cat passing by your window, can have a very large emotional impact.”
― D. Randall Blythe, Dark Days: A Memoir

“I have come to realize that useless, directionless anger is one of my greatest character defects, and when I indulge myself in it, I am remaining in a problem, not its solution.”
― Randy Blythe, Dark Days: A Memoir

“Today, I do not want to die.”
― D. Randall Blythe, Dark Days: A Memoir

“Growing up in the American South as a boy, I personally witnessed people of an advanced age make a conscious decision to question what they had been taught to believe their entire lives when they began to realize that their parents were wrong. It is not an overnight process to unlearn a lifetime of what basically amounts to primitive superstition, but in this day and age, where an unfathomable amount of information is instantly and freely available to anyone with a smart phone, there is no excuse to not at least make a start.”
― Randy Blythe, Dark Days: A Memoir

“I wanted to sit still for a moment, to escape my job as a traveling, screaming, black-t-shirt salesman and just read and write for a bit. For quite some time, I had been longing to erect a barrier between myself and that noisy, hectic life; just long enough to catch my breath and relax without being “Randy from lamb of god.” I never imagined that that barrier would unexpectedly arrive in the shape of prison walls.”
― Randy Blythe, Dark Days

“I grew up my entire life feeling different than, and often was treated as such.”
― D. Randall Blythe, Dark Days: A Memoir

“The fact of the matter is that when I drink, I am 100 percent certifiably insane. Hopelessly, utterly, undeniably bat shit crazy. I do things that are abhorrent to me; anathema to my nature, my morals, and my upbringing. And once I start, I cannot stop the craziness. It just spirals on and on, ever downward, until I die or hit rock bottom. And even at rock bottom, despite all evidence that I should stop, I will grab a cold beer and a pick ax and keep digging deeper. It's insane. The only way I know to not be crazy is just not to drink.”
― D. Randall Blythe, Dark Days: A Memoir

“Sitting shiva in the dark days of the past is not the act of mourning for lost time or happiness; it is willfully murdering the only chance we ever have to be happy—right now.”
― Randy Blythe, Dark Days: A Memoir

“I'm too nerdy, too weird, too much my own quirky self to even attempt to squeeze into what I consider the strangling straightjacket of most societal norms. The few times I have tried, I have failed miserably, as "normal" people can smell something strange on me.”
― D. Randall Blythe, Dark Days: A Memoir

“multitude of mewling milk-toothed experts”
― D. Randall Blythe, Dark Days: A Memoir

“Like a pump-action twelve gauge being racked outside your back door, or a tree limb cracking beneath your weight, it is a sound that swiftly wakes you up to the reality of your situation. It is a sound that says: You’re screwed.”
― D. Randall Blythe, Dark Days: A Memoir

“I wish that every single person on this planet could have that experience. If everyone could feel it, just once, I think the world would be a better place, and we would understand that everyone in fact is the same, equal in the eyes of God, and that every voice on this planet deserves to be heard, that everyone’s song deserves to be sung. I wish this could happen for everyone,”
― D. Randall Blythe, Dark Days: A Memoir