Clay Walker Quotes

Gareth's eyes slipped open. “You make me nervous when you do that.” “Do what?” “Brood. Your brooding is rather loud.” “Oh please. I was hardly—” His eyebrow rose. “Fine. I was brooding. It's not like you don't.” “Mine is inherent to my romantic nature. Cloaks and castles.” Adele threw up her hands. “That's it. You are forbidden to look at any more cheap books about yourself.

I'm in this relationship for the capes and castles.

What I've found is that country doesn't refer to where you grew up as much as where your heart grows down, where it takes root. Country is a state of mind. I believe what ultimately defines being country is simple: a loving heart, a helping hand, an open mind, poor in spirit.

The princess stared wide-eyed after her silent teacher. She lifted the hem of her robe and followed. "Is this your secret geomancer society?" "No. Could you please not say 'secret geomancer society' out loud?

We are small, inconsequential beings. It is only our place in the hearts of others that fills us up, that gives us our purpose, our pride, and our sense of self. We need our parents to love us without condition, without logic, and beyond reason. We need them to see us through lenses warped by this love and to tell us in every way that just having us walk this earth fills them with joy. Yes, we will come to learn that our clay giraffes were not masterly. But when we pull them out of our attics, they should make us cry, knowing that when our parents saw these ugly pieces of plaster, they felt ridiculously misplaced pride, and they wanted to hug us until our bones hurt. This is what we need from our parents, more than the truth about how small we are. We will have more than enough people to remind us of that, to give us dispassionate evaluations of our mediocrity.

My grandmothers were strong. They followed plows and bent to toil. They moved through fields sowing seed. They touched the earth and grain grew. They were full of sturdiness and singing. My grandmothers were strong. My grandmothers were full of memories Smelling of soap and onions and wet clay With veins rolling roughly over quick hands They have many clean words to say. My grandmothers were strong. Why am I not as they?

Until very recent times, few black Americans have regarded the African connection as a major theme in their lives. David Walker, in his 1829 Appeal . . . to the Colored Citizens of the World, said of America, "This land which we have watered with our tears and our blood is now our mother country". "No one idea has given rise to more oppression and persecution toward the colored people of this country", wrote the great Frederick Douglass, "than that which makes Africa, not America, their home. It is that wolfish idea that elbows us off the sidewalk, and denies us the rights of citizenship". When the freedmen after emancipation chose last names, they took not African names but the names of American heroes--Washington, Jefferson, Clay, Lincoln. "Centuries of residence, centuries of toil, centuries of suffering have made us American", a black high-school principal in Ohio said in 1874. "In language, in civilization, in fears, and in hopes we are Americans".

We’d done little more than introduce ourselves to the woman at the front desk of the tailor, when the door behind us opened. I didn’t turn around at first, not really caring who else walked into the store, but when Will spoke to someone, I looked to see who it was. Clay. In his blue fireman pants and boots and a blue tee-shirt with Hartford Fire Department written on the front. Great. Just fucking great. “When I texted Clay earlier,” Will said, “I told him we’d be here and wouldn’t be long, and that he should come down if he had time.” I guess he had time. Where the fuck are all the pyromaniacs when I need them?