Tiffany McDaniel Quotes

#1. The snake has had its victories over me. And in its victories I am no longer sweet nor gentle.

Tiffany McDaniel

#2. I once heard someone refer to Breathed as the scar of the paradise we lost. So it was in many ways, a place with a perfect wound just below the surface.

Tiffany McDaniel

#3. The heat came with the devil. It was the summer of 1984, and while the devil had been invited, the heat had not. It should've been expected, though. Heat is, after all, the devil's name, and when's the last time you left home without yours?

Tiffany McDaniel

#4. It would do none of us any good, runnin' an evil off like we're too weak and too scared to take care of our own problems. As if we zero in bravery and sword. We can't forget, we are the lords of our own 'round here, and we alone hiss back the serpent.

Tiffany McDaniel

#5. Being the devil made him important. Made him visible. And isn't that the biggest tragedy of all? When a boy has to be the devil in order to be significant?

Tiffany McDaniel

#6. Breathed was the combination of flower and weed, of the overgrown and the mowed. It was Appalachian country, as only Southern Ohio can be, and it was beautiful as a sunbeam in waist-high grass.

Tiffany McDaniel

#7. I shot all the bad, but damn it all, I shot all the good as well. That's something you never quite come back from. That's something that's a fresh pain every day.

Tiffany McDaniel

#8. Sometimes the things we believe we hear are really just our own shifting needs.

Tiffany McDaniel

#9. Dear Mr. Devil, Sir Satan, Lord Lucifer, and all other crosses you bear,
I cordially invite you to Breathed, Ohio. Land of hills and hay bales, of sinners and forgivers.
May you come in peace.
With great faith,
Autopsy Bliss

Tiffany McDaniel

#10. Don'tcha wanta live forever?"

"I'm the devil. I am already forever.

Tiffany McDaniel

#11. Pain is our most intimate encounter. It lives on the very inside of us, touching everything that makes us. It claims your bones, it masters your muscles, it reels in your strength, and you never see it again. The artistry of pain is its content. The horror of it is the same.

Tiffany McDaniel

#12. No one ever said you've got to prepare to be hated. You've got to prepare for the yelling and the anger. You have got to prepare how to survive being the guilty one, even in innocence.

Tiffany McDaniel

#13. I know the sins of everyone who comes to hell. That's part of my misery. To know and feel theirs.

Tiffany McDaniel

#14. If the devil was going to come, I expected to see the myth of him. A demon with an asphalt shine. He'd be fury. A chill. A bad cough. Cujo at the car window, a ticket at the Creepshow booth, a leap into the depth of night.

Tiffany McDaniel

#15. Sometimes this world is like red fences in the snow. There ain't no hiding who we really are.

Tiffany McDaniel

#16. I'm the devil. No one tells me when to stay and when to leave. But it sure is nice to be wanted. I tell you, Fielding, it sure is nice to be wanted in this very place.

Tiffany McDaniel

#17. You can imagine anything you want in the dark. You can imagine your father loves you, you can imagine your mother is not disappointed, you can imagine that you are...significant. That you mean somethin' to someone. That's all I ever wanted, Fielding. To matter. That is all I've ever wanted.

Tiffany McDaniel

#18. It's just sometimes you don't say nothin' for so long, you forget why ya shut up in the first place.

Tiffany McDaniel

#19. A snake that could harm you, you don't have much choice to kill. You wouldn't be able to leave a cobra in your sock drawer. But a snake that is no threat will greatly define the man who decides to kill it anyways.

Tiffany McDaniel

#20. A foolish mistake, it is, to expect the beast, because sometimes, sometimes, it is the flower's turn to own the name.

Tiffany McDaniel

#21. If looks were to be believed, he still was just a boy. Something of my age, though from his solemn quietude, I knew he was old in the soul. A boy whose black crayon would be the shortest in his box.

Tiffany McDaniel

#22. That is the tragedy of losing an older brother. He stays still. You keep on and one day become the older one. It's unnatural, that reversal. It's the thing that keeps the family from ever being whole again.

Tiffany McDaniel