The Sisters Brothers Quotes

“The creak of bed springs suffering under the weight of a restless man is as lonely a sound as I know.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“...but I could not sleep without proper covering and spent the rest of the night rewriting lost arguments from my past, altering history so that I emerged victorious.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“I lay in the dark thinking about the difficulties of family, how crazy and crooked the stories of a bloodline can be.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“He is not bad, I don't think. Perhaps he is simply too lazy to be good.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“Our blood is the same, we just use it differently.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“It is hard to find a friend,' I said. 'It is the hardest thing in this world,' he agreed.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“Here is another miserable mental image I will have to catalog and make room for.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“I do not know what it was about that boy but just looking at him, even I wanted to clout him on the head. It was a head that invited violence.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“We can all of us be hurt, and no one is exclusively safe from worry and sadness.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“Here lies Morris, a good man and friend. He enjoyed the finer points of civilized life but never shied away from a hearty adventure or hard work. He died a free man, which is more than most people can say, if we are going to be honest about it. Most people are chained to their own fear and stupidity and haven't the sense to level a cold eye at just what is wrong with their lives. Most people will continue on, dissatisfied but never attempting to understand why, or how they might change things for the better, and they die with nothing in their hearts but dirt and old, thin blood - weak blood, diluted - and their memories aren't worth a goddamned thing, you will see what I mean.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“I will never be a leader of men, and neither do I want to be one, and neither do I want to be led. I thought: I want to lead only myself.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“You are afraid of hell. But that’s all religion is, really. Fear of a place we’d rather not be, and where there’s no such a thing as suicide to steal us away.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“...I am happy to welcome you to a town peopled in morons exclusively. Furthermore, I hope that your transformation to moron is not an unpleasant experience.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“I thought, When a man is properly drunk it is as though he is an a room by himself--there is a physical, impenetrable separation between him and his fellows.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“Your laughter is like cool water to me," I said. I felt my heart sob at these strange words, and it would not have been hard to summon tears: Strange. " "You are so serious all of a sudden," she told me. "I am not any one thing," I said. (137)”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“Returning his pen to its holder, he told us, 'I will have him gutted with that scythe. I will hang him by his own intestines.' At this piece of dramatic exposition, I could not hep but roll my eyes. A length of intestines would not carry the weight of a child, much less a full grown man.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“Do you know how much a hundred dollars is?' he asked. I said that I did not and he answered, 'It is a hundred dollars.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“It is true, I thought. I am living a life.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“Where is your mother, Charlie asked.
Dead.
I’m sorry to hear that
Thank you. But she was always dead.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“Come with me into the world and reclaim your independence. You stand to gain so much, and riches are the least of it.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“I will admit he is unusual, but that is perhaps the closest I could come to complimenting him.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“...things I had come to find humor in would make your honest man swoon.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“when I see you, I feel the same. It is when I am away that I lose myself.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“He only wished to fight and cultivate an anger toward me, thus alleviating his guilt, but I would not abet him in this.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“Mayfield said, "You asked what I was thinking. Well, I will tell you. I was thinking that a man like myself, after suffering such a blow as you men have struck on this day, has two distinct paths he might travel in his life. He might walk out into the world with a wounded heart, intent on sharing his mad hatred with every person he passes; or, he might start out anew with an empty heart, and he should take care to fill it up with only proud things from then on, so as to nourish his desolate mind-set and cultivate something positive or new.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“All you will get from me is death.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“This moment, this one position in time, was the happiest I will ever be as long as I am living. I have since felt it was too happy, that men are not meant to have access to this kind of satisfaction; certainly it has tempered every moment of happiness I have experienced since.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“I saw my bulky person in the windows of the passing storefronts and wondered, when will that man there find himself to be loved?”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“That is to say, nine dead beavers in a line on the sand. There was something decorative about this, but also ominous or forbidding.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“This perhaps was what lay at the root of the hysteria surrounding what came to be known as the Gold Rush: Men desiring a feeling of fortune; the unlucky masses hoping to skin or borrow the luck of others, or the luck of a destination. A seductive notion, and one I thought to be wary of. To me, luck was something you either earned or invented through strength of character. You had to come by it honestly; you could not trick or bluff your way into it.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers