I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down Quotes

“You get a picture of things in your head and your picture is all you see. You don't know me. You don't even know yourself. All you know is your little picture of how things ought to be, and that's the way you think they are.”
― William Gay, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories

“He was continually called upon to explain himself and day by day it had grown harder so that by now there didn't seem to be any words, the right phrases hadn't been coined yet.”
― William Gay, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories

“For the first time in his life he realized that sometimes in life you go through doors that only open one way. You can stand before them and think about whether you want to go through them or not. But when you do and the door closes behind you there is no way to go back. The door is featureless and unknobbed and smooth as a sheet of glass. You can pound on it and claw till your fingers are bleeding, scream until your throat is raw, but no one will open the door, no one will even hear you.”
― William Gay, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories

“They trickled down sunless corridors and burst capillaries until they were in the city's dark heart. A city within a city where the blood slowed and thickened and clotted in viscous smears of alizarin crimson dried to burnt sienna around the edges.”
― William Gay, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories

“He was driving into a world where the owls roosted with the chickens, where folks kept whippoorwills for pets and didn't get the Saturday Night Opry till Monday morning.”
― William Gay, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories

“He drove on and on over rutted switchback roads. Jesus Christ, he said. He was driving into a world where the owls roosted with the chickens, where folks kept whippoorwills for pets and didn’t get the Saturday Night Opry till Monday morning.”
― William Gay, I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories

“Why are you acting like such a fool about this? Well, I didn’t set out to act like a fool about it, he said. It sort of happened to me a little at a time.”
― William Gay, I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories

“He marveled at how different they were, how wide and varied the gulfs between them. It saddened him that he no longer had the energy or even the inclination to try and broach them.”
― William Gay, I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories

“He was driving into a world where the owls roosted with the chickens. Where folks kept Whip-poor-wills for pets and didn't get the Saturday Night Opry till Monday morning.”
― William Gay, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories

“[S]ometimes in life you go through doors that only open one way. You can stand before them and think about whether you want to go through them or not. But when you do and the door closes behind you there is no way to go back. The door is featureless and unknobbed and smooth as a sheet of glass. You can pound on it and claw till your fingers are bleeding, scream until your throat is raw, but no one will open the door, no one will even hear you.”
― William Gay, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories

“I just couldn't stand that goddamned yip yip yip.”
― William Gay, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories

“I thought you looked like a man with a bridge on fire, she said.”
― William Gay, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories