Mothertrucker Quotes

“More often, it seems to me, what doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger but becomes a blemish you work your whole life to find a way to live with.”
― Amy Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“Summer is, ostensibly, the safest time to drive on the Dalton Highway, truckers would later tell me. After all, it is always light, and there is no ice, no snow, no darkness to hide the sharp curves or steep summits that wind between mountains. In Prudhoe Bay's summer, truckers tell me, you can see everything, protect yourself from everything. But more truckers die that time of year than any other, because when we talk about safety on the Dalton Highway, we are always talking about illusion.

We are talking about delusion.

We are talking about what is and always is the most dangerous highway in America.”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“Looking out at the space between us, I know Joy and I both learned early in our lives that a lack of love is just as dangerous as anything else this world presents.”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“Here is a truth every Alaskan will agree upon,” Joy says as we walk in. “To be Alaskan is to love your soup. Get out your notebook. Write that down.”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“It’s not much different from life in a city, Chelsea explains: you wake up, you work, you eat. One life is the same as another, and a day here is a day anywhere, except there’s no bank or grocery store, no mall or Panera Bread. There’s nothing commercial, actually, and also no town or church or house. There”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“One life is the same as another, and a day here is a day anywhere, except there’s no bank or grocery store, no mall or Panera Bread. There’s nothing commercial, actually, and also no town or church or house. There”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“the shadow of abuse’s doubt”—the gray space”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“The luckiest people in this world are those who manage to reinvent, to live so many lives in the one life that they are given.”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“Listen. I believe we were put on this earth to love,” she says, “and I believe we love until we can’t love any longer. But the woman I was then, when we first married, when all this started? I so desperately wanted James to break the cycle, to get sober. Had I listened to Dr. Laura back then, I would’ve walked away. And I would’ve saved myself a lot of pain. A lot of heartache. But I believed I could love him out of it. And I believed it was my job to make him better.” “I have spent my whole life incarcerated by that idea.” “Of course you have!” she says. “I have, too! I think most women do! I have spent my whole life shackled to this belief, and it’s a bunch of garbage.”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“We are lucky,” she says, “to get to love something without violence. But when violence enters the picture, the only question is how long love lasts.”
― Amy E. Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“learn”
― Amy Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“the biggest mistake I’ve ever made was allowing a man to decide if I was worthy, and then believing him when he said I wasn’t.”
― Amy Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“This is the difficult truth of being abused: you come to expect abuse everywhere, and certainly from any person who resembles your abuser in any way. The generosity flees; the kindness inside you flees. There is no benefit of the doubt, no opportunity for pleasure. The mind tries to anticipate, to outwit, outsmart, and flee. It is a fight-or-flight behavior that encourages an antagonistic approach to the world, and it is not fulfilling, not empowering. It makes me feel, instead, very small.”
― Amy Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“I know Joy and I both learned early in our lives that a lack of love is just as dangerous as anything else this world presents.”
― Amy Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“She told me of a study in which scientists determined that domestic abuse lights up the same neurotransmitters as gambling.”
― Amy Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“I also know from experience how dangerous it can be to interpret everything as God’s reward or God’s punishment.”
― Amy Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“This one misconception about abuse most women know but I was still learning: abuse is not deterred by social class, by economic or financial privilege, by sexual orientation or race. These things undoubtedly influence how easy it is to leave—and to be successful in that endeavor, to be supported and safe and even believed—but they are in no way a barrier to abuse.”
― Amy Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America

“I’ve heard it said before that sometimes all women have are stories. And that because women are so often stripped of the power or the autonomy or the safety to tell their own, it is up to other women to share their stories for them.”
― Amy Butcher, Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America