Gods of Howl Mountain Quotes

“It wasn’t dying that she feared, it was dying bad: leaving her grandboy alone in the world, unprotected, his wounds unhealed. Death, which walked ever through these mountains, knew she would not go down easy.”
― Taylor Brown, Gods of Howl Mountain

“Christ's father let him die on that cross. I understand why he done it. But Christ never had no granny like me.”
― Taylor Brown, Gods of Howl Mountain

“He ascended the mountain in darkness, no lamplight, a world black and silver and blue. The moon lay scattered through the woods in blades, glowing palely, the wind rising now and again to moan through the trees. The trail scrawled ever upward, toward the looming darkness of the mountain's peak. Above it all the sea of night, the strange ornamentation of stars.”
― Taylor Brown, Gods of Howl Mountain

“Christ’s father let him die on that cross,” she said. “I understand why he done it.” She leaned closer, whispering in his ear: “But Christ never had no granny like me.”
― Taylor Brown, Gods of Howl Mountain

“Some things were too big to be spoken. Too terrible or sweet. No words could hold them. Only silence seemed honest.”
― Taylor Brown, Gods of Howl Mountain

“These brickhouse Christians, they feared misfortune like a curse, like something they could catch by touch or word or tongue.”
― Taylor Brown, Gods of Howl Mountain

“Death presided over these lands like an entity itself, a thousand shreds of the same dread spirit just looking for an opening, a wound or weakness of character. Once in, it was tough to get out.”
― Taylor Brown, Gods of Howl Mountain

“Multicolored glass bottles, too many to count, dangled from the branches on tied strings. The evils come skulking over the far hills, out of the lightless hollers and dry wells—the bottles captured such spirits. Contained them. Kept them out of the house, out of her grandson’s dreams and heart. When the wind came sawing across the meadow, you could hear them moaning in their bottles, trapped. The spirits were mean, she thought, but they weren’t very smart.”
― Taylor Brown, Gods of Howl Mountain

“Prayed and prayed. Not to the church-god, exactly. To her own. One that lived closer, up on the mountain, perhaps. For here was a place fit for a god to live, not in any building or book. Here she was understood. She was wicked, sure, but no hypocrite. She had fought every day of her life, same as the beasts of the field. The bloody Christ nailed naked and roaring to the cross—his bones iron-split, his body whip-flayed to the meat—he was hard as they come. Surely he prized grit, a game heart. Same as she did.”
― Taylor Brown, Gods of Howl Mountain

“He found Granny on the porch, asleep. Her chin sat on her chest, rising and falling with her breath. He gathered her up in his arms, light as a girl, and carried her inside to her room. He covered her in her old handed-down quilt. The outer layers were burnished to a luster over decades of sleeping flesh, the inner batting composed of older blankets still. He tucked it under her feet, her elbows and shoulders, and went out into the den and opened the door of the wood stove. A mouth of red coals. He added two lengths of the seasoned white oak they kept stacked on the porch, hot-burning wood for cold nights, and stoked it to a fury before stepping outside.”
― Taylor Brown, Gods of Howl Mountain