Follow Me Down Quotes

“Generally the first week in September brings the hottest weather of the year, and this was no exception. Overhead the fans turned slow, their paddle blades stirring the air up close to the ceiling but nowheres else...”
― Shelby Foote, Follow Me Down

“Later they took him to Jackson and that explained it; he was crazy.”
― Shelby Foote, Follow Me Down

“But it was one thing to condemn him when court had adjourned and you looked back on what he had done, and it was another different thing entirely when you were sitting on the jury with a man’s life in your hands and Nowell was walking up and down in front of the rail in that crisp white linen suit, stopping every now and then and leaning forward to speak in a voice that was barely above a whisper, the courtroom so quiet you could hear your neighbor holding his breath and every time Judge Holiman raked one of those matches across the bench it was like the crack of doom, Nowell throwing law at you with one hand and logic with the other, until finally you got to thinking you were all that was left in this big wide ugly world to save a poor victim of malice and circumstance from being lynched by the State of Mississippi.”
― Shelby Foote, Follow Me Down: A Novel

“We’re each two different people, is why, and we live in two different worlds. Just as we carry our waking bodies and some of our waking thoughts into the world of dreams, so we bring the thoughts and happenings of the world of dreams back with us when we return to the world of daylight. They mingle, they explain each other: we look forward and backward, trying to find a reason for what is happening in this world by remembering something more or less like it that happened in the other. The mix-up comes when we stand between the two, groping in both directions.”
― Shelby Foote, Follow Me Down: A Novel

“So I had decided to do it the easy way. Make them believe he was insane and the scales would fall from their eyes; they would ‘understand’; the fear, the hate would be gone, evaporated. “So thats it,” they would say; “he’s crazy. I knew it all along.” They might even begin to pity and sympathize. Good old Hollywood Christianity: God’s gift to the Defense.”
― Shelby Foote, Follow Me Down: A Novel

“She’d rouse me out of bed all hours of the night and I’d wait in the hall. They were mostly soldiers and sailors and merchant mariners, or businessmen down on convention. This is one lousy life, Mamma said, but I’m doing the best I can with what Ive got. I wish I could afford to send you to some kind of business school so you could learn to type.—She never did but I never blamed her. For one thing, she only turned the nicest ones over to me, the businessmen.”
― Shelby Foote, Follow Me Down: A Novel

“(he was young and fond of the sound of his voice; his main fear was he might leave something unsaid)”
― Shelby Foote, Follow Me Down: A Novel

“Once somebody asked him, “Why dont you retire?” and he looked back at them, glaring down from the height of all those bachelor years: “Retire?” he says, “I am retired. I’m clean away from this world and sitting in judgment on it”—”
― Shelby Foote, Follow Me Down: A Novel

“Love has failed us. We are essentially, irrevocably alone. Anything that seems to combat that loneliness is a trap-Love is a trap:”
― Shelby Foote, Follow Me Down: A Novel

“The trial was two months off. The public was primed. Hardly a day went by that the Stevenson boy didnt run something in the paper. They ate it up. They were anxious to see the show—it’s their only chance to see ‘live’ actors. Generally speaking, they wanted to see Eustis get the chair. There is nothing unusual about that: they are bloodthirsty enough by nature. Besides, it meant another show, at least an epilog, though it’s true the audience would be limited and tickets hard to get. Mainly, though—bloodthirstiness aside—their reaction was based on envy. Eustis had done things they had always wanted to do, beyond the pale, but didnt dare.”
― Shelby Foote, Follow Me Down: A Novel

“I told her the time to start worrying about a lawyer’s fee was after he brought it up: which was a lie. Most people didnt pay them anyhow, I said: which at least was partly true, to a degree.”
― Shelby Foote, Follow Me Down: A Novel

“It’s true we have an affinity for evil. What she told me had occurred in an atmosphere much like that of Troilus and Cressida, in which the faithful are betrayed and the brave are slain. I was reminded of Emerson’s “Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.”
― Shelby Foote, Follow Me Down: A Novel

“Then one night at the very end of May he came home late with the smell of perfume on him. So thats it, I thought: after all these years. And I waited. Time after time I’d seen it happen to other men at such an age—a change of life: they get to thinking how much theyve missed, and they get scared. Just wait, I told myself, lying alone in bed those nights (it was June by then); it will play out on him soon enough.”
― Shelby Foote, Follow Me Down: A Novel

“Next morning at breakfast he paid Mamma four hundred dollars, cash on the table, for that one night. I watched him count the money out of his wallet, and while I watched I thought what a good thing it was I hadnt told even Mamma about the altar boys those times in the sacristy, behind the stacks of missals. All told, she got twelve hundred dollars for just the last three weeks of June, plus Pullman tickets for both of us back to New Orleans.”
― Shelby Foote, Follow Me Down: A Novel

“That night I woke up hearing voices. They were driving some kind of bargain, in a whisper. I couldnt hear the words they said, but I found out next afternoon. Dont be scared now, Mamma said; he’s just a big overgrown boy. Overgrown two hundred and forty-five pounds, I thought. All right, I said. And when she sent me to my room right after early supper, I found my gown already laid out on the bed, the new one with lace on the collar that she gave me for graduation. He came on tiptoe, barefoot, wearing a nightshirt; the sun wasnt decently down behind the mountain. Having fun up here, pet? he said. He sat on the side of the bed, smiling and showing his teeth, and plucking at tufts on the spread—he was bashful. After a while he said, Dont you think it’s a little warm for all that lace? Wait, sweetheart, let me help you. Gracious, child, how nice, how very nice. I bet nobody’s ever so much as touched them, except maybe yourself at night alone in the dark. You know what you are, sweetheart? Youre a bud, a tender bud; thats what you are.”
― Shelby Foote, Follow Me Down: A Novel