Southernmost Quotes

“Forgiveness is the easiest thing in the world, Justin thinks. All you do is just decide to do it, and then it’s done. Instantly you feel better, like pushing aside a quilt that is too heavy for sleeping. Forgetting is the hard part.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“It’s more important to show him how to be good to people than how to judge them.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“When they lived in Key West Justin thought the Everything lived in the ocean. Sometimes he thought the ocean was God. But if the Everything lives anywhere, it's in a river. Because the river moves along and touches every little thing on it's way. An he thinks the Everything would be quiet like a river. Event still sometimes. The ocean is always moving and noisy. The sky's always changing. But rivers are always there, even when the water has moved on. You've got to find the Everything wherever you are.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“Only recently had he realized the way books could give a person wings.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“Surely there is a light in that boy that will never go out, no matter what he has to face along the way. That's all a father can hope for his child, that a little fire will burn in them to keep them going, to keep them strong.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“to Justin that he was everything in the world to him. He wanted to tell his son that his own existence meant nothing until he was born. He wished Justin could know the way he felt about him, the way no child could ever really fathom until they cherished someone else completely. Being a parent was a constant heartache, an endless act of making sure the child was as safe and as happy as a person could possibly be in this life. Asher wanted to tell his son that he would die for him, or kill for him, and everything in between. He wished he could tell Justin that he had given”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“You can use the Word to judge and condemn people or you can use it to love them.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“none of us can know the mind of God. He’s too big for that.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“God is in everything and everybody.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“There had been a time when he would have thought this serendipity happened because God was on his side. Now he sees the arrogance of that thought.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“Some nights he thinks they are just a dream God is having”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“The heat was thick as curtains. Night was fixing to slide over the world and the cicadas were calming down for that hushed time between daylight and darkness, when crickets rosined their bows.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“Neither one of them has been able to sleep. Shady has been just as upset as Justin. Dogs know things. They know and know and know.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“That’s all a father can hope for his child, that a little fire will burn in them to keep them going, to keep them strong.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“It’s alright. Sometimes we laugh and sometimes we cry and as long as we’re alive, we can deal with everything else. You know?”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“He had to work consciously to keep a madness from growing in his mind.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“You can use the Word to judge and condemn people or you can use it to love them. The day I turned Luke away, I felt that doubt pulsing inside me. Sometimes I wonder if that doubt isn’t God, giving us a little nudge.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“For a long while Asher hasn’t known how to believe. Because how does a person keep their faith intact when they lose their child? How can we believe in a God that would allow a father and a son who love each other to be separated unfairly? Where is the goodness when a man turns his back on his brother for being who he was made to be? How can God sit by and let evil twitch itself out over the world? That’s God, he thinks, looking out at Justin standing in the water, the sun behind him so that Asher can make out only his shape, a shape he has memorized, has burned into his mind’s eye. Because God is in my son.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“Asher likes to watch her when she is feeling everything in a big way. She is either happy in a big way or sad in a big way. Asher is like that, too, but no one knows that except him. That’s the difference between himself and Evona: she hides nothing and he reveals hardly anything. That’s the way he has always survived. Sometimes even hiding the truth from himself.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“Some nights Asher thinks Key West is the whole world and that the people who are sitting there with him eating pie or watching the night are the only ones left. Some nights he thinks they are just a dream God is having. Sometimes he thinks there may not be a God at all. This is perhaps the most frightening thing of all for him.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“Sometimes we laugh and sometimes we cry and as long as we’re alive, we can deal with everything else.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“Being afraid of somebody who’s different’ll make an awful meanness come over you.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“And if there’s one thing I know for sure it’s that you never shun somebody because you don’t agree with them. We’re ever one of us children of God.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“But a person can believe something so hard they lose sight of everything else.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“believe in God, but I don’t believe in church.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“Dogs know things. They know and know and know.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“thinks. All you do is just decide to do it, and then it’s done. Instantly you feel better, like pushing aside a quilt that is too heavy for sleeping. Forgetting is the hard part.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“All of this could have been different if both of his parents had taken a breath.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“Nobody can just let a person be.”
― Silas House, Southernmost

“I’ll say this for her, she sticks to what she believes. But a person can believe something so hard they lose sight of everything else.”
― Silas House, Southernmost