Mapping the Interior Quotes

“I'm all right," I told her. This is a lie, when you're twelve. And all the other years, too.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior

“You never tell your mom anything that might worry her. Moms have enough to worry about already.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior

“If you can delay pain, you delay it, don’t you? Even when it’s inevitable. Especially when there’s teeth involved.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior

“This is what it's like to kill your father. This is what it’s like to kill everything your father could have been, if only the world hadn’t found him, done its thing to him.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior

“Indians, we don’t have guardian angels—if we did, they’d have been whispering to us pretty hard when some certain ships bobbed up on the horizon—but we do have helpers. I think usually it’s supposed to be an animal.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior

“Standing there, I promised myself that if I ever had kids, I was going to be different. It’s a promise every Indian kid makes at some point. You mean it when you say it, though. You mean it so hard.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior

“That’s how you talk about dead people, though, especially dead Indians. It’s all about squandered potential, not actual accomplishments.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior

“I was twelve the first time I saw my dead father cross from the kitchen doorway to the hall that led back to the utility room.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior

“This is what it’s like to kill your father. This is what it’s like to kill everything your father could have been, if only the world hadn’t found him, done its thing to him.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior

“Every fourth person on our reservation, that’s their name, like the same stupid person is trying life after life until he gets it right at last.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior

“I’m all right,” I told her. This is the lie, when you’re twelve. And all the other years, too. You never tell your mom anything that might worry her. Moms have enough to worry about already.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior

“You can leave the reservation, but your income level will still land you in a reservation house, won’t it? I’d heard my mom say this on the phone once, and it had stuck to the inside of my head in a way I knew I was going to be looking over at that part of the inside of my skull for the rest of my life, probably.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior

“To sleepwalk is to be inhabited, yes, but not by something else, so much. What you’re inhabited by, what’s kicking one foot in front of the other, it’s yourself. It doesn’t make sense, but I don’t think it’s under any real compulsion to, finally. If anything, being inhabited by yourself like that, what it tells you is that there’s a real you squirming down inside you, trying all through the day to pull up to the surface, look out. But it can only get that done when your defenses are down. When you’re sleeping.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior

“This is something all Indians think, I think: that, yeah, we got colonized, yeah, we got all our lands stolen, yeah yeah yeah, all that usual stuff. But still, inside us, hiding—no, hibernating, waiting, curled up, is some Crazy Horse kind of fighter. Some killer who’s smart and wily and wears a secret medicine shirt that actually works.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior

“Junior Junior Junior." Every fourth person on our reservation, that's their name, like the same stupid person is trying life after life until he gets it right at last.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior