The Only Good Indians Quotes

“This is all you really need, isn’t it? Just one good friend. Somebody you can be stupid with. Somebody who’ll peel you up off the ground, prop you against the wall.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“We’re from where we’re from,” she says back. “Scars are part of the deal, aren’t they?”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“What he didn't say was that you don't get cold-resistant because your jackets suck, you just stop complaining about it after a while, because complaining doesn't make you any warmer.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“The land claims what you leave behind.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“An elk mother, cornered, will slash with her hooves and tear with her mouth and even offer the hope of her own hamstrings, and if none of that works, she'll rise again years and years later, because it's never over, it's always just beginning again.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“It's soft at the end. Not just the pain, but the world.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“When the whole world hurts, you bite it. Don't you?”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“For them, ten years ago, that's another lifetime.
For you, it's yesterday.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“These are the kind of wrong thoughts people have who are spending too much time alone. They start unpacking vast cosmic bullshit from gum wrappers, and then they chew it up, blow a bubble, ride that bubble up into some even stupider place.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“Dealing with cops is like being around a skittish horse: No sudden movements, nothing shiny or loud. Zero jokes.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“She’s got some Cross Guns in her veins, too. What this means, Gabe knows, it’s that she’s going to reach an age where she’ll want to take the world in her teeth and shake until she tears a hunk of something off for herself. And then, whether it’s good or bad, whether it’s a scholarship or a five-year bid in state or two kids in as many years, she’ll sit in the corner by herself and chew it down, dare anybody to say this isn’t exactly what she wanted.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“Lewis made sure Shaney left with an armload of books, a whole series, to prove to Peta why she’d been there, but the whole time, stacking them up, it felt like an overcorrection, like trying to hide a body on the lawn by covering it with eight other bodies.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“Denorah hates that she’d believed that, once upon a time. And she wants to cry for not getting to believe it anymore. Yes, the deer drank milk, and that left their mouths ringed white. Fuck it. Run, run.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“That’s how they were supposed to be. It’s what they, at fifteen, were supposed to have been doing. They’d been fired into adolescence and were swerving to each side now like crazy, trying to find the straight and narrow.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“The ladder tilts the opposite way, like it doesn’t want to be involved in anything this ugly, and all of this is in the slowest possible motion for Lewis, his head snapping as many pictures as it can on the way down, like they can stack up under him, break his fall.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“Each time he came back with all his fingers he would flash thumbs-up all around the platform to show how he was lucky, how none of this was ever going to touch him.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“Jerry says Lewis shouldn’t hold it against Harley. He didn’t know what he was doing. When the whole world hurts, you bite it, don’t you?”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“Peta reaches up to his forehead, delicately removes a flake of paint from the basketball pole, and then pulls him to her chest, her palm to his cheek, and this, her, it's home, and it's not haunted, not even a little.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“Lewis finds the fourteen-foot aluminum ladder under boxes in the garage, Three Stooges in into the backyard...”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“White girls know the names of everything.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“He didn’t so much get there as just never leave.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“Only stupid Indians brush past a bunch of hard-handed white dudes, each of them sure that seat you had in the bar, it should have, by right, been theirs. They’re cool with the Chief among them being the chain monkey, but when it comes down to who has an eyeline on the white woman, well, that’s another thing altogether, isn’t it?”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“The way whitetails got that white ring around their mouth and nose, according to him, it was because they were always sneaking into Browning to drink from the bowls of milk everybody used to leave out, from back when there weren’t any reservation dogs, only reservation cats. That was why the whitetail could come into town like that: no barking. But the cats were too good, they got the mice all so scared that the mice got smart, started living so deep in the walls of the houses that the cats couldn’t get to them, so one day all the cats just left. It was two, maybe three days after that the first dog trotted into town with a stupid grin on its face, looked around for what it could pee on. Denorah hates that she’d believed that, once upon a time. And she wants to cry for not getting to believe it anymore. Yes, the deer drank milk, and that left their mouths ringed white. Fuck it. Run, run.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“It’s soft at the end. Not just the pain, but the world.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“The pages gather in his left hand, thin out in his right.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“Some games, you are Reggie Miller. And, if you're really good, you're maybe even Cheryl.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“We’re from where we’re from,” she says back. “Scars are part of the deal”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“This is all you really need”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“She's going to reach an age where she'll want to take the world in her teeth and shake until she tears a hunk of something off for herself... she'll sit in the corner by herself and chew it down, dare anybody to say this isn't exactly what she wanted.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

“That, he claimed all reverentially, was what each person there in group had already done: rushed up to overdoses, to freezing while doped up, to crashing a car because of impaired reflexes, to vomiting in their sleep and drowning—addictive behavior was the big-time enemy, couldn’t they see? And the fact that they were all here meant they’d already ran up to it, had already counted coup on it, and gotten away with their lives. The question now was whether they would come back to the tribe proud of how close they’d got, or if they’d go back again and again, until the enemy got its hook into them all the way, left them in a ditch somewhere.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians