Betty Tiffany Mcdaniel Quotes

Don’t let it happen to you, Betty. Don’t ever be afraid to be yourself. You don’t wanna live so long only to realize, you ain’t lived at all.

There are too many enemies in life to be one of yourself. So when I turned seventeen, an age that gives one permission to light the flame of new passions, I decided to refuse hate's ambition.

My father's hands were soil. My mother's were rain. No wonder they could not hold one another without causing enough mud for two. And yet out of that mud, they built us a house that became a home

It occurred to me then that to be a child is to know the cradle rocks both toward the parent and away from them. That is the ebb and flow of life, swinging toward and away from one another, perhaps so we build up the strength for that one moment we will be rocked so far away, the person we love the most is gone by the time we return.

Folks think it’s when they beg you to stay, but it’s when they let you go that you know they love you so goddamn much.

The glow of a cigarette in the dark. All the stars, the planets, the galaxies, the infinite edges. It’s all in the small glowin’ tip of a cigarette in the hand of a man leanin’ back against a wall, watchin’ a girl walk by on her way home, knowin’ she’ll never get there.

I realized then that pants and skirts, like gender itself, were not seen as equal in our society. To wear pants was to be dressed for power. But to wear a skirt was to be dressed to wash the dishes.

Boys are like that, always trying to pretend they're saving girls from something. They never seem to realize we can save ourselves.

A girl comes of age against the knife. She must learn to bear its blade. To be cut. To bleed.

One day,’ I told him, ‘God will turn out all the lights to remind people like you that in the dark, you won’t be able to tell who is white like you and who ain’t. We’ll have to treat one another equally. We’ll learn it’s not our skin color that makes us good or bad. And only when we learn that, will God turn the lights back on.

Fraya says it means you’re a woman.” “Why we have to bleed to earn it?” Flossie slammed her fists on the mattress. “What happens when we get old and it stops? What then? We stop bein’ a woman? Ain’t the blood that defines us. It’s our soul.

I realized then that not only did Dad need us to believe his stories, we needed to believe them as well. To believe in unripe stars and eagles able to do extraordinary things. What it boiled down to was a frenzied hope that there was more to life than the reality around us. Only then could we claim a destiny we did not feel cursed to.

Funny that ‘she’ should be in ‘sheet,’ ain’t it? I reckon it’s just another way to lay on a woman and get away with it.

The two wolves live inside all of us,” Dad had said. “They fight until one of them is killed.” When I asked him which wolf lives, he said, “The one you nourish and love.

My heart is made of glass and if I ever lose you, Betty, my heart will break into more hurt than eternity would have time to heal.

The heaviest thing in the world is a man on top of you when you don't want him to be.

My sister was just another girl doomed by politics and ancestral texts that say a girl’s destiny is to be wholesome, obedient, and quietly attractive, but invisible when need be. Nailed to the cross of her own gender, a girl finds herself between the mother and the prehistoric rib, where there’s little space to be anything other than a daughter who lives alongside sons but is not equal to them. These boys who can howl like tomcats in heat, pawing their way through a feast of flesh, never to be called a slut or a whore like my sister was.

Sometimes I think the universe is just a glow. The glow of a cigarette in the dark. All the stars, the planets, the galaxies, the infinite edges. It's all in the small glowin' tip of a cigarette in the hand of a man leanin' back against a wall, watchin' a girl walk by on her way home, knowin' she'll never get there.

Some men know the exact amount of money in their bank accounts,” she continued. “Other men know how many miles are on their car and how many more miles it’ll handle. Other men know the batting average of their favorite baseball player and more other men know the exact sum Uncle Sam has screwed ’em. Your father knows no such figures. The only numbers Landon Carpenter has in his head are the numbers of stars in the sky on the days his children were born. I don’t know about you, but I would say that a man who has skies in his head full of the stars of his children, is a man who deserves his child’s love. Especially from the child with the most stars.

Imagine havin' wings, Betty. There wouldn't be nothin' too high. Nothin' you wouldn't be able to get to the top of. You can't fall with wings. God wasted 'em on birds and bats. He should have given wings to us.

I had come to realize that buried secrets are just seeds that grow more sin.

Your life is what makes you rich,' they insisted. 'The people you love and the people who love you back

...my father had been born from the minds of writers. I believed the Great Creator had flown these writers on the backs of thunderbirds to the moon and told them to write me a father. Writers like Mary Shelley, who wrote my father to have a gothic understanding of the tenderness of all monsters. It was Agatha Christie who created the mystery within my father and Edgar Allan Poe who gave darkness to him in ways that lifted him to the flight of the raven. William Shakespeare wrote my father a Romeo heart at the same time Susan Fenimore Cooper composed him to have sympathy toward nature and a longing for paradise to be regained. Emily Dickinson shared her poet self so my father would know the most sacred text of mankind is in the way we do and do not rhyme, leaving John Steinbeck to gift my father a compass in his mind so he would always appreciate he was east of Eden and a little south of heaven. Not to be left out, Sophia Alice Callahan made sure there was a part of my father that would always remain a child of the forest, while Louisa May Alcott penned the loyalty and hope within his soul. It was Theodore Dreiser who was left the task of writing my father the destiny of being an American tragedy only after Shirley Jackson prepared my father for the horrors of that very thing.

Between God and Devil, our family tree grew with rotten roots, broken branches, and fungus on the leaves

Oh, gee,” I said. “You know us girls too well. All we want is flowers and candy and gettin’ our boobs touched. What more is there to life than that? Never mind if we can pick our own flowers for ourselves, or eat candy whenever we want to. Gee, I sure am glad that you know what us girls want because we might not be able to figure that out on our own.

What do you do when the two people who are supposed to protect you the most are the monsters tearing you to pieces?

But I had learned that just because time has moved forward, it does not mean something so terrible ever gets easier to bear.

A girl comes of age against the knife, Betty.” She softly tucked my hair behind my ears before kissing me on the forehead. “But the woman she becomes must decide if the blade will cut deep enough to rip her apart or if she will find the strength to leap with her arms out and dare herself to fly in a world that seems to break like glass around her. May you have the strength.

Some little girls grow up with fathers who are decent, kind and tenderly nested by their daughter's heart. Other little girls grow up with no father at all, thus ignorant of good men and the not so good ones. The unluckiest of all little girls grow up with fathers who know how to make storms out of sunshine and blue skies. My mother was one such unlucky little girl and suffered the childhood you run away from. Except, if you have nowhere to run to

Like the night before, I found her naked and sitting on the edge of her bed. Unaware I was there, she continued to massage her legs, their blue-green veins twisting beneath her skin. I wasn't as afraid seeing her body this second night. In the folds and creases, I saw her history. Her skin was the diary of her soul. All the springs she had watched the flowers bloom. The summers she had stood before the moon and kissed its face. The autumns she had grown wiser. The winters that had frozen the initials of her name. Each wrinkle was a record of this and of every hour, minute, and second she had lived. All her secrets were written in her skin. The things she had asked God for. The things she had cursed the devil about. In such age before me, I saw only beauty.

One day...God will turn out all the lights to remind people like you that in the dark, you won't be able to tell who is white like you and who ain't. We'll have to treat one another equally. We'll learn it's not our skin color that makes us good or bad. And only when we learn that, will God turn the lights back on.

I realized then that the whole time I thought I'd been walking alone, my father had been with me. Supportin' me. Steadyin' me. Protectin' me, best he could. I knew I had to be strong enough to stand on my own two feet. I had to step out of my father's hands and pull myself up out of the mud. I thought I would be scared to walk the rest of my life without him, but I know I'll never really be without him because each step I take, I see his handprints in the footprints I leave behind.

The earth is warm enough.’ Nature speaks to us. We just have to remember how to listen.

She was born to a woman as telling as a dream and to a man who was a Cherokee, a moonshiner, and a mythmaker.

No matter how beautiful the pasture, it is the freedom to choose that makes the difference between a life lived and a life had.

all spineless creatures are frightened of a woman’s power.

Your life is what makes you rich,’ they insisted. ‘The people you love and the people who love you back.

The first woman was given antlers on her head to branch her power out into the world,” he said, digging the rake in deeper. “Slugs are frightened of that power because they are spineless creatures, and all spineless creatures are frightened of a woman’s power.

I realized then that not only did Dad need us to believe his stories, we needed to believe them as well. To believe in unripe stars and eagles able to do extraordinary things. What it boiled down to was a frenzied hope that there was more to life than the reality around us. Only then could we claim a destiny we did not feel cursed to

But in life, you either live in someone else’s house or you build your own. A man with hands like my father’s was a man who had built his home out of star and sky. He had held on to the throb of life and abandoned comforts. You can’t do that sort of thing and not expect your hands to get dirty. That’s how you know you’re doing it right.

Pendant un moment, elle a galopé, tout heureuse dans ce pré, mais quand elle a atteint la barrière, elle s’est rendu comte qu’elle n’était toujours pas complètement libre. Je comprenais ce besoin d’aller au-delà de la clôture. Aussi belle que puisse être la pâture, c’est la liberté de choisir qui fait la différence entre une existence que l’on vit et une existence que l’on subit.

The pony's head rose above the open roof as her mane whipped in the wind. I knew she must be thinking of running free through tallgrass fields, wild daisies slapping her shins, no one to hold her down. I slid my hand up her leg, feeling raised ridges of whip scars. The tips of her ears had been cut. There were smaller scars across her nose. A knife had been used there, perhaps only to remind her who she belonged to. She had lived by the orders and commands of men. Her entire existence on earth and she had never once been allowed to be free. She had been imprisoned and owned, as if all of her value was wrapped up in how large a load she could carry on her back. She had lived her life to the point of being given away, her legs too weak to run, her eyes no longer able to see a world beyond the coal cave she was forced to spend her life in. And yet, now she could feel the wind in her mane. She was not too dead for this small kindness that delivered her from a past of hell to a moment she could believe she was free enough to gallop as she wished. Is this love? she must have been asking herself. Am I finally loved?

imagined my breasts being attached to a trellis as if central to my gender there was an expected weakness and irresponsibility the world had already created a bra to train out of me.

One day, I told him, 'God will turn out all the lights to remind people like you that in the dark, you won't be able to tell who is white like you and who ain't. We'll have to treat one another equally. We'll learn it's not our skin that makes us different. And only when we learn that will God turn the lights back on

Don't let it happen to you, Betty. Don't ever be afraid to be yourself. You don't wanna live so long only to realize, you ain't lived at all

Your life is what makes you rich,' they insisted. 'The people you love and the people who love you back.

Houses are built in the beginning by the father and the mother. Some houses have roofs that never leak. Some are built of brick, stone, or wood. Some have chimneys, porches, a cellar and an attic, all built by the hands of the parents. Hands of flesh, bone, and blood. But other things, too. My father’s hands were soil. My mother’s were rain.

Nailed to the cross of her own gender, a girl finds herself between the mother and the prehistoric rib, where there's little space to be anything other than a daughter lives alongside sons but is not equal to them.

But you may only pick what is unripe, he told me, for no star can live on earth, but what is meant to be a star most certainly can.

If we bring it down to earth, infinity is a series of rolling hills. A countryside in Ohio where all the tall-grass snakes know how angels lose their wings.

The earth is warm enough.

Imagine bein' a five-year-old girl and your brother - the boy who is supposed to protect you - starts eatin' your fingertips until he's eatin' your arms until he's eatin' your whole damn body

Old angers are mostly faded now. Guilt still remains. That's something that refuses to be shorter than eternity. I think part of eternity will be my father playing a mushroom trumpet while my mother watches him, the refrigerator door open until the milk sours. [...] I think between the two of them they could have been pretty good at love. Too bad grief made myths of everything.

Dear Betty, your father is your father, is the first woman, is the sun, is the light, is all that is kind.

I dug my fingernails into my scalp and backed against the wall. I was too damn young. Only nine years old and I was floating over the world, seeing fathers ruin their daughters. Brothers ruin their sisters.

Lightnin' is the devil bangin' at heaven's door," he said. "Throwin' his whole body into it with so much force, he cracks the sky. But the devil only knocks on the door of heaven when it's storms." "Why?" I asked. "So the rain will hide his tears as he bangs at his father's door, beggin' to be met back in.

Lightnin' is the devil bangin' at heaven's door," he said. "Throwin' his whole body into it with so much force, he cracks the sky. But the devil only knocks on the door of heaven when it's storms." "Why?" I asked. "So the rain will hide his tears as he bangs at his father's door, beggin' to be let back in.

In her most wholesome form, Breathed was a wife and mother who made sure to hang her flag banners on her porch rails every Fourth of July. At her darkest, she was the place you could bleed to death in without a single open wound

He offered her a cigarette. She took it with her head down. "Fray?" His voice was soft. Like the first beams of light in the morning. She left the cigarette in her mouth for so long, she began to look older than nineteen years. "I once dreamed you had a million eyes and not one of 'em was lookin' at me," she said on an exhale of smoke. "I liked that dream.

As the juice dripped down her chin, I thought of how God exists in little ways we don’t always see unless we happen to be looking at the very moment a sister dares the demons and reminds you that not all paradises have gone just yet.

Nailed to the cross of her own gender, a girl finds herself between the mother and the prehistoric rib, where there’s little space to be anything other than a daughter who lives alongside sons but is not equal to them. These boys who can howl like tomcats in heat, pawing their way through a feast of flesh, never to be called a slut or a whore like my sister was.

Story always has been a way to rewrite the truth. But sometimes to be responsible for the truth is to prepare oneself to say it.

Her skin was the diary of her soul. All the springs she had watched the flowers bloom. The summers she had stood before the moon and kissed its face. The autumns she had grown wiser. The winters that had frozen the initials of her name. Each wrinkle was a record of this and of every hour, minute, and seconds she had lived. All her secrets were written in her skin. The things she had asked God for. The things she had cursed the devil about. In such an age before me, I saw only beauty.

Algunos hombres saben la cantidad exacta de dinero que tienen en sus cuentas corrientes —continuó—. Otros hombres saben cuántos kilómetros tiene su coche y cuántos kilómetros más podrá recorrer. Otros hombres saben el promedio de bateo de su jugador de béisbol favorito y más hombres aún saben la suma exacta que el Tío Sam les ha sacado. Tu padre no sabe esas cifras. Los únicos números que Landon Carpenter tiene en su cabeza son los números de estrellas que había en el cielo los días que sus hijos nacieron. No sé tú, pero yo diría que un hombre que tiene en la cabeza los cielos llenos de las estrellas de sus hijos es un hombre que se merece el amor de esos hijos. Sobre todo, de la hija con más estrellas.

I did it, Betty. I touched heaven. I flew. I flew like the birds. I flew…

Don’t ever be afraid to be yourself. You don’t wanna live so long only to realize, you ain’t lived at all.

What do you do when the two people who are supposed to protect you the most are the monsters tearing you to pieces? No wonder Mom still hurt. She hadn’t been loved enough.

As the juice dripped down her chin, I thought of how God exists in little ways we don't always see unless we happen to be looking at the very moment a sister dares the demons and reminds you that not all paradises have gone just yet.

You know what the heaviest thing in the world is, Betty? It’s a man on top of you when you don’t want him to be.

A girl comes of age against the knife, Betty." She softly tucked my hair behind my ears before kissing me on the forehead. "But the women she becomes must decide if the blade will cut deep enough to rip her apart or if she will find the strength to leap with her arms out and dare herself to fly in a world that seems to break like glass around her. May you have the strength.

I thought I would be scared to walk the rest of my life without him, but I know I’ll never really be without him because each step I take, I see his handprints in the footprints I leave behind.

A girl comes of age against the knife Betty…but the woman she becomes must decide if the blade will cut deep enough to rip her apart or if she will find the strength to leap with her arms out and dare herself to fly in a world that seems to break like glass around her. May you have the strength

A girl comes of age against the knife, Betty, [...] but the woman she becomes must decide if the blade will cut deep enough to rip her apart, or if she will find the strength to leap with her arms out and dare herself to fly in a world that seems to break like glass around her. May you have the strength.

Everything we need to live a life as long as we’re allowed has been given to us in nature,” he’d say. “That’s not to claim if you eat this plant, you will never die, for the plant itself will one day die, and you are no more special than it. All we can do is try to heal the things that can be healed and ease the complaints of the things that cannot be. At the very least, we bring the earth inside us and restore the knowledge that even the smallest leaf has a soul.

Sometimes I think the universe is just a glow. The glow of a cigarette in the dark. All the stars, the planets, the galaxies, the infinite edges. It’s all in the small glowin’ tip of a cigarette in the hand of a man leanin’ back against a wall, watchin’ a girl walk by on her way home, knowin’ she’ll never get there.

Sighing, I stared at my reflection. My skin had been darkened by the summer sun to a rich color not unlike our garden after a rain. I always thought it was a beautiful color, the garden after a rain. And yet, I wanted to be the bright-eyed child, too pale to live on barren land. At least that’s what everyone but Dad seemed to be telling me I should want. To seek another face, one that would be pallid in the moonlight. But as I stared longer at my reflection, I asked myself what was so terribly wrong with the way I looked. After all, my ancestors had bundled magic on a thousand walks through Christ and millennias, denying the faintest suggestion that they were not beautiful enough. The black of my hair had been part of ancient ceremonies. My eyes were steeped in tradition, buoyed by the divinity of nature. Dad always said we came from great warriors. Did I not have this greatness in me? The power of a woman so ancient, but still young in her time. I imagined her as she was then. Her spirit fierce. Her bravery undeniable. How could I not be as powerful? Why could I not consider myself beautiful when I thought of her as the most beautiful one of all? I

Sure, she danced in short skirts and flirted, she kissed boys, went skinny-dipping, wore lipstick to bed, and let her bra strap show. But she was a heck of a lot more than the sum of all these things put together. Still, she was judged by them because she had dared to collide with the image of purity. My sister was just another girl doomed by politics and ancestral texts that say a girl’s destiny is to be wholesome, obedient, and quietly attractive, but invisible when need be. Nailed to the cross of her own gender, a girl finds herself between the mother and the prehistoric rib, where there’s little space to be anything other than a daughter who lives alongside sons but is not equal to them. These boys who can howl like tomcats in heat, pawing their way through a feast of flesh, never to be called a slut or a whore like my sister

I wasn’t as afraid seeing her body this second night. In the folds and creases, I saw her history. Her skin was the diary of her soul. All the springs she had watched the flowers bloom. The summers she had stood before the moon and kissed its face. The autumns she had grown wiser. The winters that had frozen the initials of her name. Each wrinkle was a record of this and of every hour, minute, and second she had lived. All her secrets were written in her skin. The things she had asked God for. The things she had cursed the devil about. In such age before me, I saw only beauty.

You are a reminder of everything she’s losin’. All mothers are envious of their daughters to a certain degree because the daughters are at the beginnin’ of youth while the mothers are losin’ theirs. It’s only natural to feel jealous. That’s all your mother is doin’. Rearin’ her jealous head because as you grow more beautiful, she fears losin’ her own loveliness. If you know your own magnificence, there goes her power. Her tellin’ you you’re no beauty is her bein’ a woman before bein’ a mother.

There are too many enemies in life to be one of yourself. So when I turned seventeen, an age that gives one permission to light the flame of new passions, I decided to refuse hate’s ambition.

don’t know if I’ve ever told you that I love you, Little Indian. I don’t know if I’ve ever said those words.” “You said them every time you told me a story.” I looked up into his eyes. He smiled. I knew it would be the last. “Have I ever told you I loved you?” I asked because I really didn’t know. “Every time you listened to one of my stories.

The face of his wristwatch reflected the sun in a blinding spot of light.

I didn't know what to say at first, so I let myself feel instead.

The plants blowing in the wind and brushing against the sides of my legs.

Jack-o'-lanterns out on porches quick to greet me with a smile and triangle eyes. Grocery store candy rustling in bags while crisp leaves blow past the rake of the old man too weary to pile them. A single purple scarf carried by the wind down a dirt lane and a crow of no name flying overhead. This is October to me. A conquering circle of automnal shadows, ghosts, and mothers.

Boys are like that. Always tryin' to pretend they're savin' girls from somethin'. They never seem to realize, we can save ourselves.

Her skin was the diary of her soul. All the springs she had watched the flowers bloom. The summers she had stood before the moon and kissed its face. The autumns she had grown wiser. The winters that had frozen the initials of her name.

For a minute, he thought he might leave her, but a better part of him existed there better with her.

They are good because they have been danced in. Shoes that have been danced in are of better character than those that have merely been stood in.

I realized then that the whole time I thought I’d been walking alone, my father had been with me. Supportin’ me. Steadyin’ me. Protectin’ me, best he could.

Boys are like that. Always tryin’ to pretend they’re savin’ girls from somethin’. They never seem to realize, we can save ourselves.

Through his stories, I waltzed across the sun without burning my feet.

That’s what the gloves are for, he thought. To pretend she’s a lady and not another muted beauty expected to rust her way out of creation like some broken-down tractor in a field.

MY BROKEN HOME You give me a wall, And I’ll give you a hole. You give me a window, And I’ll give you a break. You give me water, And I’ll give you blood. —BETTY

Cicadas,” I told her. “I want to be a princess with a dress made of cicada shells. I want wings, too. Wings made of violets and—” “And I want to be a queen with the vagina of a virgin,” she said, “but that ain’t gonna happen now, is it?” She applied a fresh layer of lipstick to her already red lips. “Anyways, princesses do not look like you, Betty. That mud-colored skin and stringy hair of yours. You ever seen a princess look like you?

Even if you were beautiful, Betty,” Mom said, “you could not be a princess. A Carpenter cannot afford a crown or a throne.

After I told Pappy what I saw, he forced Brother to eat the Bible, page by page, in order to swallow his sin. Brother fought back, but Pappy always was a strong man. Halfway through Adam and Eve’s saga, Pappy had crammed so many pages into Brother’s mouth, his cheeks were stretched full of ’em. Even after Brother choked to death, Pappy kept addin’ pages until Brother’s lips were forced open so wide, they started to tear at the corners.

Husbands always do that. They think as long as the house is clean and the work done, their wives will be happy as if all the joy of life centers on a washed floor.

She raised up and looked at me, both her brows arched in their sharpest points as she said, “If you keep botherin’ me, I’m gonna hang ya in a tree by that long Indian hair of yours and call for the crows to come peck your eyes out. You want that to happen, Pocahontas?

A woman shall compass a man. —JEREMIAH 31:22