The Heavenly Table Quotes

“He had never met anyone who played music for a living who wasn’t fucked-up in some sad or depraved way, the same as those who painted pictures or wrote books or traipsed about spouting lines on a stage from the latest melodrama. In his opinion, only the truly miserable were really any good at artistic endeavors of any kind.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Heavenly Table

“As far back as he could remember, there hadn’t been a day when he wasn’t yearning for something he didn’t have. And that wore a man down after so many years, fighting that feeling day after day without any letup. Why couldn’t he ever be satisfied?”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Heavenly Table

“It made no sense, the way Americans sometimes went bananas over certain people for absolutely no reason, as if they were just drawing names out of a hat.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Heavenly Table

“Well, brothers,” he said, “ain’t nothing ever gonna be the same now.” “That’s for goddamn sure,” said Chimney, then he gouged his horse in the flanks and the others followed.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Heavenly Table

“A man gets to thinkin’ he’s beat, he just as well hang it up. Besides, they’ll be enough of that doom and gloom shit when we’re dead.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Heavenly Table

“He had once shucked corn with an old man named Garnet Quick who had lost an ear in the War Between the States, the one they fought over freeing the slaves, and Ellsworth had harbored a sneaking suspicion ever since he’d talked to the man that a war could get started over the least little thing.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Heavenly Table

“Without taking hold of some of the misery in the world, there can’t be no redemption. Nor will there be any grace.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Heavenly Table