Poachers Quotes

“He buys Playboy magazines and looks through them once, then gives them to me. That’s what it’s like to be rich.

Here’s what it’s like to be poor. Your wife leaves you because you can’t find a job because there aren’t any jobs to find. You empty the jar of pennies on the mantel to buy cigarettes. You hate to answer the phone; it can’t possibly be good news. When your friends invite you out, you don’t go. After a while, they stop inviting. You owe them money, and sometimes they ask for it. You tell them you’ll see what you can scrape up.

Which is this: nothing.”
― Tom Franklin, Poachers: Stories

“So one night last week I ran into Paul at a liquor store. He was drinking again.”
― Tom Franklin, Poachers

“I poach for stories. I poach because I want to recover the paths while there’s still time, before the last logging trucks rumble through and the old, dark ways are at last forever hewn.”
― Tom Franklin, Poachers

“coming back like this to hunt for details for my stories feels a bit like poaching on land that used to be mine. But I’ve never lost the need to tell of my Alabama, to reveal it, lush and green and full of death. So I return, knowing what I’ve learned.”
― Tom Franklin, Poachers

“Although they often kill out of season or at night, they usually eat what they kill. I admire them, and so I feel a flicker of distaste for this outsider.”
― Tom Franklin, Poachers

“the south where these stories take place—is lower Alabama, lush and green and full of death, the wooded counties between the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers.”
― Tom Franklin, Poachers

“I realized how lucky I was to have been raised here in these southern woods among poachers and storytellers.”
― Tom Franklin, Poachers

“In the divorce my ex got everything. Even kept her composure.”
― Tom Franklin, Poachers: Stories

“
It wasn't Glen's jealousy that surprised him. "You owe Roy money?"
"Yep. Borrowed it to get my truck painted."
"Roy's a loan shark, too?"
"You ever see JAWS?" Snakebite asked.
Glen said he had.
"How 'bout THE GODFATHER?"
"Yeah."
"Well, if Michael Corleone waded out in the ocean and fucked that shark, then you'd have old Roy."

from the Tom Franklin short story "Grit" (page 31) from POACHERS:STORIES”
― Tom Franklin, Poachers: Stories