Brenda Sutton Rose Quotes

#1. Songs. Books. Poetry. Paintings. These things reveal truth. I believe lies and truth are tangled together.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#2. He takes a draw on a cigarette, blows out a smoky ghost. I reach to catch the phantom in my hands, but it eludes me. I've been trying to catch a ghost for as long as I can remember.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#3. At 2:00 sharp on the afternoon of his internment, with his body resting in a casket in the front room of his home, the pallbearers--all bridge players--stuck a deck of cards in Mr. Hampton's cold hands, shut the lid over his head, and played bridge.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#4. As he farmed, hard labor left his hands callused, the sun bleached his hair, his face leathered, and his heart throbbed with music.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#5. Kevin knew he had to always outrun the enemy inside him, and if that meant playing football, he'd do it. During puberty, he had taken off running and found too late that he couldn't stop. In dreams that turned into nightmares he ran in fear, ripped from sleep in a sweat, shouting,"Run!

Brenda Sutton Rose

#6. Are you aware that Jesus Christ can spell? I get so tired of you spelling every slang and cuss word that crosses your mind, as though you are pulling one over on the Lord.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#7. I could go to a dozen houses, scrape away the dirt, and find his footprints, but my own prints evaporated before I ever looked back.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#8. A part of him died slowly, and the other part died overnight

Brenda Sutton Rose

#9. When a man's running, he seldom looks back.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#10. Although I wasn't there to bear witness, I imagine Lot's wife scanned the masses for her children. Perhaps she sought out the curves of their mouths and the shapes of their faces, trying to memorize her children, grown now. She looked back as I and any strong, loving mother would have done.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#11. Carrying the need to bow down and seek solace at the altar of nature, he had launched the canoe in the darkness. Tonight, his altar was the Alapaha River.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#12. If he could do one thing, he could run. He had spent his life running, secrets spitting at his back.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#13. Jasmine felt a sense of power in cooking. It was she who controlled the ingredients, she who controlled the menus, and she who controlled the fragrances that filled her home.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#14. Sometimes we need to be knocked down so we can experience the getting up.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#15. The truth had lacerated him to the bone, had punctured his heart, and had ripped through his soul. The truth had slain him and tended to his wounds. The truth had hated him and loved him. The truth had opened his eyes to his own faults.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#16. A song rises up from the belly of my past
and rocks me in the bosom of buried memories.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#17. As I string, a swift rhythm is played out with my hands, a cadence known only to those who have strung tobacco. To many of the poor workers, the meter and rhythm of stringing tobacco is the only poetry they've ever known.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#18. Farm labor had stained his hands, but music stained his heart.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#19. My mother's dress bears the stains of her life:
blueberries, blood, bleach,
and breast milk;
She cradles in her arms a lifetime
of love and sorrow;
Its brilliance nearly blinds me.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#20. With red clay between my toes,
and the sun setting over my head,
the ghost of my mother blows in,
riding on a honeysuckle breeze, oh lord,
riding on a honeysuckle breeze.

Brenda Sutton Rose