The Bullet Swallower Quotes

“Kindness is its own reward,” she said, “but cruelty is a self-inflicted wound.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“Death had been the process of splitting apart, and so life must be the process of being made whole.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“The whole facade of polite society was built to hide the fact that underneath we’re a sweaty mass of lust and jealousy and greed.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“If I owned Hell and Texas,” Peter said, fanning himself against the heat and squinting in the unrelenting sunlight, “I’d rent Texas and live in Hell. We’re still south of the Nueces, aren’t we? This paradise is what the Texans won in the war? If you ask me, the Texans ought to fight Mexico again and force them to take it back.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“How inadequate was love when it couldn’t stop suffering?”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“Superstitions were a trap waiting to swallow the searching and the sick.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“I couldn’t find the bullet.” She fixed him with the eye that still held a lively shadow of brown. “You are El Tragabalas,” she said with a small smile. “The bullet swallower.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“A man is at war with everything,’ he thought, ‘even time itself.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“Old things don't pass away. Everything comes back around. Our punishment is that we're always moving forward, but always in a circle.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“Antonio tied a bandana around his head. He would give the world only half a face, show only what would not terrify, and this, he told himself, was how everyone else lived anyway.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“The harm we don’t intend hurts the worst, and the door into Hell is always open.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“I like to watch the sunset. It’s always surprised me how little people grieve when darkness overtakes the light.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“Kindness is its own reward," she said, "but cruelty is a self-inflicted wound.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“Of divinity he thought very little beyond the plain truth that knowing love was as close as he wished to come to knowing God.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“It is a hard thing to be a good man.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“Inside Jaime the battle raged, between filial piety and personal fulfillment, obedience and destiny, integrity of one kind, and integrity of another.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“The harm we don't intend hurts the worst, and the door into Hell is always open.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“The baby sighed in his sleep and Antonio winced, for in his grief he forgotten he had been handed one final, beautiful thing.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower

“But I think the story is so much more than that, than him being a bad guy...It's about vengeance and justice and history and, well, all of it.”
― Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower