The Cold Millions Quotes

“How do you do it?” I asked her. “How do you keep getting up every day and fighting when winning seems impossible?” She thought about it, and then she said, “Men sometimes say to me: You might win the battle, Gurley, but you’ll never win the war. But no one wins the war, Ryan. Not really. I mean, we’re all going to die, right? “But to win a battle now and then? What more could you want?”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“With all due respect, sir,” she said, “I do not believe justice will ever be truly possible, economic or otherwise, for any human being, until we have once and for all emancipated the vagina.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“Rye wondered if loving another person was a trap—that eventually you had to either lose them or lose yourself.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“Hell, it took only your first day in a Montana flop or standing over your mother's unmarked grave to know that equal was the one thing all men were not. A few lived like kings, and the rest hugged the dirt until it cracked open and took them home.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“He flushed with sadness, as if every moment of his life were occurring all at once—his sister dying in childbirth, his mother squirming in that one-room flop, poor Danny sliding between wet logs, Gig in jail, and Jules dead—and how many more? All people, except this rich cream, living and scraping and fighting and dying, and for what, nothing, the cold millions with no chance in this world.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“I think he came to believe it was better to choose your life, and that even choosing your death was better than letting someone else choose your life.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“Books that hadn’t been cracked since they were shelved. Give money to a monkey and he’ll fill his cage with bananas. Give the same money to a dim American and he’ll build a show library every time.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“At my age, you don’t cry for the loss of old friends. You make a noise, “Ah,” that is an expression of sorrow, but also of contentment that your friend lived a good life. It is, I suppose, the sound, too, of loneliness—here is yet another person I will never see again.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“Maybe it’s being close to the end, but I have this desire to pull Greg aside—to pull all my children aside, and my grandchildren—and to whisper something profound, to pass on the great wisdom I’ve acquired. Something that would open their hearts and create in them an unassailable courage, a generosity of spirit, faith in humanity.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“Elena reminds him that without his dad’s union job, he wouldn’t have had a roof over his head, but he’s one of those men of fragile confidence who needs to always believe that he’s made his own way in the world.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“cruelty and hope should never be served together.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“But Jules hated the missionaries and said cruelty and hope should never be served together.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“People expect a story to always mean the same thing, but I have found that stories change like people do.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“I fell in love with my country—its rivers, prairies, forests, mountains, cities and people. . . . It could be a paradise on earth if it belonged to the people, not to a small owning class. —Elizabeth Gurley Flynn”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“It’s quite a thing when the world is upside down to hear someone say it don’t have to be—that a man could be paid enough to feed and house himself.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“But the only thing I can think of is Time and patience.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“fell in love with my country—its rivers, prairies, forests, mountains, cities and people. . . . It could be a paradise on earth if it belonged to the people, not to a small owning class. —Elizabeth Gurley Flynn”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“form”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“patted”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“They killed the world and called it progress.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“This was the crazy thing about wealth: You only had it if you didn’t use it, but if you didn’t use it, there was no value in having it.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“Too far, Mrs. Jones! You go too far! You go too far confusing the cause of labor with that of socialism”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“Maybe it’s being close to the end, but I have this desire to pull Greg aside—to pull all my children aside, and my grandchildren—and to whisper something profound, to pass on the great wisdom I’ve acquired. Something that would open their hearts and create in them an unassailable courage, a generosity of spirit, faith in humanity. But the only thing I can think of is Time and patience.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“It’s another mystery of parenting: how you can love your kids without always liking them.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“Automobiles and horse wagons filled the streetcar's wake, and Rye stood at that intersection for a long time, staring at the tracks. The whole country was laced together with tracks. He could get on a train and end up in New York City if he wanted, and this felt like another reverie, or a premonition.

The world was becoming a single place.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“Oh," she said, "that," and loosened her grip. She must've heard this question a hundred times, because she turned away and looked out the window. "There's meat sewn in the corset," she said more quietly. "Beef liver and offal." She shrugged. "Provides some extra here, too." She patted her chest. "The cat knows that if he growls but refrains from biting, he'll get a fine meal." And now she glanced at the driver again. "Me too, I guess. If I growl, but don't bite, I get to eat.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“...the world is built to eat you alive, but before you go down the gullet, the bastards can't stop you from looking around.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“A bum wanders and drinks. A tramp wanders and dreams. A hobo wanders and works.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

“Watch! I called out. I cannot say why I yelled this except that I imagined that if I were witnessed now, I might continue to exist, even if only as a tale the boy thrilled his children with--the scoundrel who stole a ferry and rode it over the falls.
From the back of his pony, the boy raised his hand as I passed, and he called out to me the way you would to a friend you recognized, three short yelps as my barge passed, a song whose meaning I would never know but which I took to mean: I see you.
There is no world but his one, and all we want is to be seen in it.
I see you, the boy said.
And I was grateful.”
― Jess Walter, The Cold Millions