Galveston Quotes

“Certain experiences you can't survive, and afterward you don't fully exist, even if you failed to die.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“When it worked, reading could take away the burden of time.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“We come here to tell stories so that we can manage the past without being swallowed by it.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“I've found that all weak people share a basic obsession - they fixate on the idea of satisfaction. Anywhere you go men and women are like crows drawn by shiny objects. For some folks, the shiny objects are other people, and you'd be better off developing a drug habit.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“Some people. Something happens to them. Usually when they're young. And they never get any better.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“I knew the past wasn't real. It was only an idea, and the thing I'd wanted to touch, to brush against, the feeling I couldn't name - it just didn't exist. It was only an idea, too.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“You’re here because it’s somewhere. Dogs pant in the streets. Beer won’t stay cold. The last new song you liked came out a long, long time ago, and the radio never plays it anymore.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“There’s no getting out alive, but you hope to avoid a deadline.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“Something passed close to me then, a feeling or piece of knowledge, but I couldn't quite get it. A sense of something I'd once known or felt, a memory that wouldn't come into the light. I kept reaching, but I couldn't grasp the thing.

It felt near, though.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“You’re born and forty years later you hobble out a bar, startled by your own aches. Nobody knows you. You steer down lightless highways, and you invent a destination because movement is key. So you head toward the last thing you have left to lose, with no real idea what you’re going to do with it.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“I suppose you have to be very careful how you use your memories.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“What I remembered about the man then was how helpless he'd seemed, and how you could tell that helplessness had made him cruel.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“When I read I got involved in the words and what they were saying so that I didn't measure the passing of time in typical ways. I was surprised to learn that there was this freedom made of nothing but words. Then I felt like I had missed some crucial point, a long time ago.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“The past isn't real.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“I remember a buddy of mine once telling me that every woman you loved was a mother and sister you didn't have, at once, and that what you were always really looking for was the female part of yourself, your female animal or something. This guy could get away with saying something like that because he was a junkie and read books.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“Still, there was a bored sadness to her. And a resignation I’d seen on faces my whole life—people giving up, crossing over to that place without struggle—and I wanted to alter that.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“The last new song you liked came out a long, long time ago, and the radio never plays it anymore.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“Now and then she looked harassed by her own potential, like certain young people, and you might notice then the way a stillness spread through her eyes, and her unguarded face forgot to play a role, just look stunned by confusion and remorse, while the features of this face were organized by a kind of country pride that wouldn't admit confusion or remorse.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“So I was wrong when I told Rocky you could choose what you feel. It's not true. It's not even true that you can choose when you'll feel. All that happens is that the past clots like a cataract or scab, a scab of memory over your eyes. And one day the light breaks through.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“I was worried I’d live forever.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“In this climate all things seek shade, and so a basic quality of the Deep South is that everything here is partially hidden.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“I’d known dudes like this my whole life, country morons stuck in a state of permanent resentment. They abuse small animals, grow up to beat their kids with belts and wreck their trucks driving drunk, find Jesus at forty and start going to church and using prostitutes.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“I think the reason men liked her was because she gave off high levels of carnality. You looked at her and just knew - this one's up for anything. It's sexy, but you can't really stand it.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“You steer down lightless highways, and you invent a destination because movement is key.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“If I give her the truth, then maybe I am released of its obligations. I can pass the truth to its rightful owner, and the frozen stars in my chest might finally ignite.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“She sipped her drink and the ends of her lips curled, stamped two dimples on her cheeks, and in her smile flashed the danger of momentum, of riding hard with no plan.

But I didn't need a plan, only movement. Like the purest assassin, I was already dead.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“actual army, because I’d used a knife to cut little strips out of the can sides so that they folded down, like arms, and I’d pulled the tops upright to resemble heads. I’d done all that while watching Fort Apache,”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“For both of us the landscape had a gravity that tugged us backward in time, possessed us with people we used to be.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“She reminded me of the empty glass of a swallowed cocktail, and at the heart of the empty glass was a smashed lime rind on ice.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

“What I came to see later was that I was asking her to convince me, to give me an excuse. Like an unmade part of me saw its chance to be born.”
― Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston