Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

(New York: HarperCollins, 2022), 652

"At the time, I thought my life couldn't get any worse. Here's some advice: Don't ever think that." (51)
"Riding the bus with high-schoolers was where you learned everything...Once this fierce tiny towheaded girl got so fed up of a big guy calling her Q-tip, she stood on the seat behind him and cracked her Etch A Sketch over his head...That girl was going places. Probably she's the president of something by now. At the least, not pregnant." (72)
"She asked me what I wanted to be whenever I grew up. I Had to think about that...I told her nobody ever asked me that question before, about growing up an what I wanted to be, so I didn't know. Mainly, still alive." (88)
"Next April I was going to have a brother or sister. Which blew my mind actually, to put it that way. Me, Demon, that never had even a cousin to my name, soon to be a big brother. Maggot would be jealous. He'd never had any brothers or sisters so far, with future hopes slim to none." (88)
While working tobacco: "I had a list going in my head that fall, of what all I would tell my little brother one day. But time passed and eventually my mind had only one thought in it as regards childhood. For any kid that gets that as an option: take that sweet thing and run with it. Hide. Love it so hard. Because it's going to fucking leave you and not come back." (97)
Hard work: "But you keep on, sunup to sundown in any weather, because if a farmer fails to get his crop in, he's lost it all. Land, livestock, the roof over his head. For some, a lousy day's work will get you yelled at. For farmers, it's live or die." (100)
"The landfill is where I figured out one of my main philosophies, that everybody alive is basically in the process of trading out their old stuff for different stuff, day in day out. The idea though is to be moving up the ladder, not down, like the McCobbs were. Landfill, pawnshops, Walmart. All places for moving things one way or the other along that road." (151)
"Now I watched other kids raise their hands, get their answers right, and good for them. Topic sentences, Appomattox Courthouse, life cycle of a plant, what is all that? If all your brain wants to know is, where's the door out of here and wherever it goes, will you still be starving." (167)
"I wanted to go home. Which was nowhere, but it's a feeling you keep having, even after that's no place anymore." (210)
"I told her I was pretty used to doing everything for myself like laundry and worst case, paying the rent. She laughed and said not to be putting her out of her job. She said mine was just to be a little boy. Weird. I'd not had that job before." (224)
"'Demon,' she was always saying, 'life is a wild, impetuous ride. There could be good shit up ahead, don't rule it out.'" (248)
"A successful team is not made of leaders. It is made of followers." (252)
"These kids did seem young. Outside of the dummy classes, you'd be hard pressed to find a kid in Jonesville Middle that had even held down a job. Being friends with such people entailed listening to made-up problems to some degree." (254)
"I done nothing to deserve good luck, and I knew what people are made of. Sooner or later they will turn on you. Or die." (255)
"'Whenever I's a boy,' he finally said, 'we just done like we's told. Is that so damn hard to do?' I said we probably were more messed up nowadays due to TV and cable." (287)
"But with another person knowing it was hell, you had something. I wanted to ask if he ever saw Tommy or Swap-Out, but really I wanted to be the only one that mattered to him." (300)
"The kid is standing there in rubber feet, gassing up his eighty-thousand-dollar SUV for the purpose of hauling around his fucking kiddie boat, and we are the freaks." (387)
"It's all we want, we ragged boys of the world. To live as men." (434)
"Think of that baby coming. I know how hard it is, but you'll get clean." (455)
"Did this baby join up with my little brother in the black hole of lost and nameless, or was he lucky enough to skip the draft pick altogether." (458)
"The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between." (468)
"Age-old heartbreak of this place, your great successes fly away, your failures stick around." (534)

Topic: Novel

Source

Becca: Kudija Family Book Club

Created: 2025-01-06-Mon
Updated: 2025-06-11-Wed