Mission to America Quotes

“Art, art of any kind, shows that folks are trying.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“I still believe in love. I always will. It's my blessing and my burden.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“Love is a powerful painkiller.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“Frustration comes from fighting your own momentum.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“The most beautiful faces have some ugly in them.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“She's everything I wanted when I was young and everything I distrust now that I'm not.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“Thoughts are thoughts and that's all they are.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“I understood that no one lives forever, but there are certain people whose power and presence so thoroughly penetrate your view of things that contemplating their absence feels as strange as imagining having never been born yourself.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“His thoughts were clearly still shoving him further away, toward some ultimate dark drama that he might or might not have actually lived through but whose telling would let out the pressure inside his skull.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“I could see tall ideas standing up behind his eyes.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“Central Wyoming was like hell without the flames, an underworld thrust up onto the surface.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“She was already dead, but we were starved for followers and stupefied by the elixir of our own heroism, and so we pretended words could resurrect her.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“I'd forgotten this about women: so many conditions. A man shouldn't take them to heart, and yet he does, because he doesn't want to be alone.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“This was all our world was made of: decomposed visions. Not atoms --- bits of dreams.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“His voice sounded more sincere in these surroundings, less distorted by pride and pain.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“They lived in a blurry world, those two, where clear, consistent intentions weren't required.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“Spirit was a by-product of activity, like the reflection from a spinning fan blade, and our souls in the end did not reside within us but flowed outward from our movements.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“I just wasn't ready for his stories. They'd breed with the others I'd heard and hatch new monsters, because there was no such thing as separation here, not once you'd started listening. Never listen.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“Reliving his degradation had struck some spark in him and it was glowing now like a blown-on coal.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“Other people's devotions embarrassed me, perhaps because, like other people's kisses, they rarely looked genuine when viewed too closely.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“I sensed that almost all of them knew they didn't have much more time on earth. Maybe this accounted for their willingness to pitch in with strangers and form a neighborhood.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“The human body is strangely made and sometimes it pays not to think about it too closely.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“Meanness on request isn't meanness at all, but kindness carried too far.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“Men who turn their faith into a business owe all of us a steak dinner now and then.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“I preferred that my bad dreams be vague.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“He looked like a being who'd voyaged back through time from a world that had overcome illness, pain, and conflict.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“Their throat muscles shifted sharply when they spoke, as if separately manufacturing each word.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“I feel like my head is finally the right size. I feel like it finally fits around my mind.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“Requesting permission from someone to be honest is really a way of accusing the other person of being so demanding or overbearing that you couldn't be honest all along.”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America

“endless soaring toy-rocket dreams and schemes that let out a sad, weak 'pop' at their high climax point and then flake apart as they tumble toward some thorn patch that's also a hatching ground for baby snakes”
― Walter Kirn, Mission to America