The Devil All the Time Quotes

“Some people were born just so they could be buried.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“It's hard to live a good life...It seems like the Devil don't ever let up.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“Unless he had whiskey running through his veins, Willard came to the clearing every morning and evening to talk to God. Arvin didn't know which was worse, the drinking or the praying. As far back as he could remember, it seemed that his father had fought the Devil all the time.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“They's a lot of no-good sonofabitches out there."
Arvin asks, "More than a hundred?"
Willard laughed a little and put the truck in gear. "Yeah, at least that many.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“The way she saw it, too much religion could be as bad as too little, maybe even worse; but moderation was just not in her husband’s nature.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“He imagined the door to a sad, empty room closing with a faint click, never to be opened again, and that calmed him a little.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“. . . if even half of history was true, then the only thing this depraved and corrupt world was good for was preparing you for the next.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“It wore on you after a while, other people's accomplishments.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“Let me pray first," he sobbed. He started to put his hands together.

"I already did it for you," Arvin said. "Put in one of them special requests you fuckers are always talking about, asked Him to send you straight to hell.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“Sometimes it seemed as if she spent half of her life crying.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“Some people were born just so they could be buried; his mother was like that, and he’d always”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“Strangers complained about the stench, but the locals liked to brag that it was the sweet smell of money.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“He raised his eyes and searched out a small patch of blue sky visible through the dense, green branches of the pines. A white wisp of cloud drifted by. That's what dying will be like, he told himself. Just floating up in the air. Nothing bad about that. He smiled a little.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“Something broke in him that day. For the first time, he could see that his whole life added up to absolutely nothing.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“What I'm saying is that when it comes right down to it, everybody suffers in the end.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“Remember that?"

"Yeah, I remember everything about that night.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“No matter what else happened, he told himself, he had to try to set right those things about his father that still ate at his heart. Until then, he'd never be free anyway.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“He died with that dream still alive in his head.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“He thought that sounded nice in a way, just going through your entire life with no more expectations than that. Sometimes he wished he weren't so ambitious.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“He had never felt comfortable worshipping God around strangers packed together inside a building.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“There's no way to turn back now, he thought. But he couldn't go on like this either. He imagined the door to a sad, empty room closing with a faint click, never to be opened again, and that calmed him a little.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“From what he could see, the job had done little to bring her out of her shell; she seemed as backward and forlorn as ever.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“He wondered if he would ever feel clean again.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“When he shot that preacher he had set something in motion that was going to follow him for the rest of his life.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“Arvin needs to have somewhere he can always call home," she told Willard. "I never did have that.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“The moon was rising by the time they got there, a sliver of ancient and pitted bone accompanied by a single, shimmering star.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“He looked out the car window at a sign that said something about Lexington. He couldn’t even remember how he had ended up in Kentucky. Who the fuck goes to Kentucky?”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“Only in the presence of death could he feel the presence of something like God.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“He's about as no-good as they come, and him the law in this county.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

“After everything that had happened the last couple of days, it didn't seem like such a good memory now.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time