God's Middle Finger Quotes

“At the same time I grew increasingly dissatisfied and irritable with what we are prone to call normal life. Except for wine, music, and books, I disliked shopping. Television grated on my nerves, the commercials in particular, so I got rid of the television. I found it harder and harder to rouse any interest in sports, celebrities, electronic gadgets, the chatter of the culture, the latest this or that. Nor did I have any desire to own a house, or get rich, or start a family. I wanted to keep traveling and see the world, live an eventful, unpredictable life with as much personal freedom as possible, and have a few adventures along the way.”
― Richard Grant, God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

“I was tired and run down and my body ached all over from being rattled and jolted. The constant breaking down of the Suburban wasn’t helping but what I really lost tolerance for, as I chauffeured Isidro on his rounds, met his friends, and dodged his enemies, was Mexican machismo. I came to hate it with as much venom as the most strident lesbian feminist. It was the root of the worst evil in Mexico, I decided, the real reason why men killed each other and raped women in such horrifying numbers.”
― Richard Grant, God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

“Most long journeys have their sour, depressive times and mine arrived with a vengeance in Baborigame.”
― Richard Grant, God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

“The streets were unpaved and deeply potholed. The drains didn’t work. Aside from a few narco houses with bright paintwork and fancy wrought-iron fences, people lived in squalid shacks and adobes. All the money had been spent on guns, trucks, alcohol, fancy clothes, and cocaine, with almost nothing invested in infrastructure or local businesses.”
― Richard Grant, God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

“These are not traditional Tarahumara or Tepehuan principles but they had picked them up through exposure to the mestizo culture. When Isidro’s father was killed, his mother implored him to take vengeance. “It was very hard, but I decided not to because if I avenged my father, I would end up losing my brothers and maybe my uncles. It wouldn’t bring back my father and would bring more sorrow into my family. My mother didn’t understand. She never really forgave me.”
― Richard Grant, God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

“In the Sierra homicide is no dishonor. Killing is a part of life, a circumstantial action, generally vengeance for another killing. However, on occasion it is a symbol of pride, when vengeance was done and the law taken into one’s own hands…. Homicide is a form of maintaining the social order where the official authority is absent, unjust or corrupt, and particularly where it fails to punish aggression or offense to the family.”
― Richard Grant, God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

“We drank four or five gourds each and got nicely buzzed there on the rim of Sinforosa Canyon and it occurred to me that this was more or less the moment I had been looking for when I set out on this journey. Here I was in the heart of the Sierra Madre, about as far from consumer capitalism and the comfortably familiar as I could get, drinking tesguino with a wizened old Tarahumara and feeling that edgy, excited pleasure in being alive that follows a bad scare. It was an uncomfortable realization. To put it another way, here I was getting my kicks and curing my ennui in a place full of poverty and suffering, environmental and cultural destruction, widows and orphans from a slow-motion massacre. I tried to persuade myself that I was going to write something that would make a difference and help these people, but my capacity for self-delusion refused to stretch in that direction.”
― Richard Grant, God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

“In the small village of Agua Salada, Salty Water, I picked up a hitchhiker for protection. Where else in the world, I wondered, did you increase your safety by inviting a complete stranger into your vehicle?”
― Richard Grant, God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

“The mean drunken hillbillies who lived up there could all feud themselves into extinction and burn in hell. I was out of courage, out of patience, out of compassion. They were sons of their whoring mothers, who had been fornicating with dogs.”
― Richard Grant, God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

“register with plastic bags full of herbs, roots, twigs and dried flowers, a box of “rattlesnake pills” with a picture of a coiled snake on the front, a packet of “Aztec energy tea,” a packet of Celebrex arthritis pills, and three boxed syringes loaded with a cortisone steroid that had been banned in the United States and presumably dumped on the Mexican market. She wrote out all the instructions and a bill that totaled nearly a hundred American dollars. I handed over the money and said thank you.”
― Richard Grant, God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

“Inadvertently I started to cross my legs again and he gave my foot another hard whack. “No red meat for two months! It releases a vitamin that gets into your shoulder and makes pain. And stop this with your legs. Don’t make me hit you again.” His eyes were fierce and charismatic and when he locked them onto mine he seemed to see right through me. “You are carrying around many sorrows,” he said.”
― Richard Grant, God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

“I started crossing one leg over the other and he reached out with surprising speed and slapped down my foot. “No!” he barked. “Not this!”
― Richard Grant, God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

“We made our plans and we grew attached to them.”
― Richard Grant, God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

“drunken”
― Richard Grant, God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

“proceeds and walking”
― Richard Grant, God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre