The White Flamingo Quotes

“One day, The road came. The road brought with it beer and cigarettes. The road brought Coca-Cola and disposable razors. The road brought all the wonderful things that we westerners know and hold close. But where did the road go? A few of the younger men decided to find out. They rode a buffalo cart along the road until they came to a town and then a train station. They hid in a bunch of rice sacks and took the train to the city, to the lights, to the jobs. There was this thing called money, with it you could buy stuff. You could gamble, drink, and be merry. After a period of two years, one of the young men returned to the village driving a new car. He showed the villagers all the beautiful things that he had bought. He said that there was work for everyone in the cities. He took another young man and two young women with him. They were pretty in a rural way and very hungry for money. Money was good. They liked it. It was a great adventure.”
― James A. Newman, The White Flamingo

“From the small of her back, up to her shoulder blades, a delicate yet extravagant piece created, no doubt, by one of the monks at one of the temples. These images were supposed to warn away evil spirits, and he thought for a moment, that perhaps she considered him potentially evil. Tigers danced, dragons spun, spirits half human, half demon climbed across her reaching up to the palace where a wizard with four arms and long cascades of hair stood before a castle atop a mountain, smoke rose from crematoriums inside the castle. An imagined lost city, an astonishing universe...”
― James A. Newman, The White Flamingo

“Hit one on the wrist and lay back on the bed. Warmth rushed up the back of his thighs and then his spine radiated his entire body with warm relief. A rose garden at dawn, wild strawberries and a girl with freckles, her parents did something vaguely artistic and were on the elementary school committee. Years later the sun setting over a carp filled lake. Sad piano music in an empty house and a sudden memory of being alone in a dark room with a framed picture of a bearded man above the bed. The picture terrified him as a child lay in bed at night. He never slept well. That beard, those eyes.
Later he found out it was Christ.”
― James A. Newman, The White Flamingo