American Novels

"[Richard] remembered what people always said, 'Trouble sires three children,' and knew immediately that he didn't want to meet the third child."

"“Normally people who die stay in their graves,” said Shadow. “Do they? Do they really, puppy? I used to think they did too. Now I’m not so sure. Perhaps.” She climbed off the bed and walked over to the window. Her face, in the light of the motel sign, was as beautiful as it had ever been. The face of the woman he had gone to prison for."

"There was a girl, and her uncle sold her, wrote Mr. Ibis in his perfect copperplate handwriting. That is the tale; the rest is detail."

"San Francisco isn’t in the same country as Lakeside anymore than New Orleans is in the same country as New York or Miami is in the same country as Minneapolis." "Is that so?" said Shadow, mildly. "Indeed it is. They may share certain cultural signifiers—money, a federal government, entertainment—it’s the same land, obviously—but the only things that give it the illusion of being one country are the greenback, The Tonight Show, and McDonald’s."

"And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be."

"There is a secret that the casinos possess, a secret they hold and guard and prize, the holiest of their mysteries. For most people do not gamble to win money, after all, although that is what is advertised, sold, claimed, and dreamed. But that is merely the easy lie that gets them through the enormous, ever-open, welcoming doors. The secret is this: people gamble to lose money. They come to the casinos for the moment in which they feel alive, to ride the spinning wheel and turn with the cards and lose themselves, with the coins, in the slots. They may brag about the nights they won, the money they took from the casino, but they treasure, secretly treasure, the times they lost. It's a sacrifice, of sorts."

"What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore, it knows it's not fooling a soul."

"Some things may change," said Wednesday, abruptly. "People, however … people stay the same. Some grifts last forever, others are swallowed soon enough by time and by the world."

"There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous."

"The brief winter days leading up to Christmas were like moments of light between the winter darknesses, and they fled fast in the house of the dead."

"I'll tell you something," he said, as if he had said nothing that day. "You're walking on gallows ground, and there's a rope around your neck and a raven-bird on each shoulder waiting for your eyes, and the gallows tree has deep roots, for it stretches from heaven to hell, and our world is only the branch from which the rope is swinging."

"So yeah, Jesus does pretty good over here. But I met a guy who said he saw him hitchhiking by the side of the road in Afghanistan and nobody was stopping to give him a ride. You know? It all depends on where you are."

"One day every soldier in the empire has to shower in the blood of your sacrificial bull. The next day they don't even remember your birthday."

"It's going to be a white Christmas," said Shadow as he pumped the gas. "Yup. Shit. That boy was one lucky son of a virgin." "Jesus?" "Lucky, lucky guy. He could fall into a cesspit and come up smelling like roses."

"It's easier to kill people, when you're dead yourself … I mean, it's not such a big deal. You're not so prejudiced anymore."

"All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end."

"I told you I would tell you my names. This is what they call me. I'm called Glad-of-War, Grim, Raider, and Third. I am One-Eyed. I am called Highest, and True-Guesser. I am Grimnir, and I am the Hooded One. I am All-Father, and I am Gondlir Wand-Bearer. I have as many names as there are winds, as many titles as there are ways to die. My ravens are Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory; my wolves are Freki and Geri; my horse is the gallows."

"I got to tell you, you don’t look too bright. I got a son, stupid as a man who bought his stupid at a two-for-one sale, and you remind me of him."

"The quickest way is sometimes the longest."

"This is the only country in the world," said Wednesday, into the stillness, "that worries about what it is." "What?" "The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are."

"That," said Wednesday, driving off, "is the eternal folly of man. To be chasing after the sweet flesh, without realizing that it is simply a pretty cover for the bones. Worm food. At night, you're rubbing yourself against worm food. No offense meant."

"Keep safe," she told him. "I would not like to hear that you were gone for good." "It would distress me equally, my dear."

"The important thing to understand about American history, wrote Mr. Ibis, in his leather-bound journal, is that it is fictional, a charcoal-sketched simplicity for children, or the easily bored. For the most part it is uninspected, unimagined, unthought, a representation of the thing, and not the thing itself. It is a fine fiction, he continued, pausing for a moment to dip his pen in the inkwell and collect his thoughts, that America was founded by pilgrims, seeking the freedom to believe as they wished, that they came to the Americas, spread and bred and filled the empty land. In truth, the American colonies were as much a dumping ground as an escape, a forgetting place."

"If I win, I get to knock your brains out. With a sledgehammer. First, you go down on your knees. Then I hit you a blow with it, so you don't get up again."

"You see, I am the only one of us who brings in any money. The other two cannot make money fortune-telling. This is because they only tell the truth, and the truth is not what people want to hear. It is a bad thing, and it troubles people, so they do not come back. But I can lie to them, tell them what they want to hear. So I bring home the bread."

"Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city."

"“Babes,” he told her. “You’re dead.” “That’s one of those aspects, obviously.” She paused. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going now. It will be better if I go.” And, naturally and easily, she turned and put her hands on Shadow’s shoulders, and went up on tiptoes to kiss him goodbye, as she had always kissed him goodbye. Awkwardly he bent to kiss her on the cheek, but she moved her mouth as he did so and pushed her lips against his. Her breath smelled, faintly, of mothballs. Laura’s tongue flickered into Shadow’s mouth. It was cold, and dry, and it tasted of cigarettes and of bile. If Shadow had had any doubts as to whether his wife was dead or not, they ended then. He pulled back."

"There are accounts that, if we open our hearts to them, will cut us too deeply. Look — here is a good man, good by his own lights and the lights of his friends: he is faithful and true to his wife, he adores and lavishes attention on his little children, he cares about his country, he does his job punctiliously, as best he can. So, efficiently and good-naturedly, he exterminates Jews: he appreciates the music that plays in the background to pacify them; he advises the Jews not to forget their identification numbers as they go into the showers — many people, he tells them, forget their numbers, and take the wrong clothes when they come out of the showers. This calms the Jews. There will be life, they assure themselves, after the showers. Our man supervises the detail taking the bodies to the ovens; and if there is anything he feels bad about, it is that he still allows the gassing of vermin to affect him. Were he a truly good man, he knows, he would feel nothing but joy as the earth is cleansed of its pests."

"The light that came into the room from outside was not bright, but Shadow’s eyes had become used to the dark. There was a woman sitting on the side of his bed. He knew her. He would have known her in a crowd of a thousand, or of a hundred thousand. She was still wearing the navy blue suit they had buried her in. Her voice was a whisper, but a familiar one. “I guess,” said Laura, “you’re going to ask what I’m doing here.” Shadow said nothing. He sat down on the room’s only chair and, finally, asked, “Is that you?” “Yes,” she said. “I’m cold, puppy.” “You’re dead, babe.” “Yes,” she said. “Yes. I am.” She patted the bed next to her. “Come and sit by me,” she said. “No,” said Shadow. “I think I’ll stay right here for now. We have some unresolved issues to address.” “Like me being dead?” “Possibly, but I was thinking more of how you died. You and Robbie.” “Oh,” she said. “That.” Shadow could smell—or perhaps, he thought, he simply imagined that he smelled —an odor of rot, of flowers and preservatives. His wife—his ex-wife ... no, he corrected himself, his late wife—sat on the bed and stared at him, unblinking."

"Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end."

"“These are gods who have been forgotten, and now might as well be dead. They can be found only in dry histories. They are gone, all gone, but their names and their images remain with us.”"

"A precise voice, fussy and exact, was speaking to him, in his dream, but he could see no one."

"He began to walk through the hall. The carved eyes of those statues that had eyes seemed to follow his every step."

"Sleep took him then, without Shadow noticing. He was walking . . . He was walking through a room bigger than a city, and everywhere he looked there were statues and carvings and rough-hewn images. He was standing beside a statue of a womanlike thing: her naked breasts hung flat and pendulous on her chest, around her waist was a chain of severed hands, both of her own hands held sharp knives, and, instead of a head, rising from her neck there were twin serpents, their bodies arched, facing each other, ready to attack. There was something profoundly disturbing about the statue, a deep and violent wrongness. Shadow backed away from it."

"Shadow could have been in his bed at home, he thought, in the apartment that he had shared with Laura—in the bed that he had shared with Laura. But the thought of being there without her, surrounded by her things, her scent, her life, was simply too painful. . . Don ’t go there, thought Shadow. He decided to think about something else."

"Shadow had promised himself a bath when he got out of prison, and Shadow kept his promises. The pizza arrived shortly after he got out of the bath, and Shadow ate it, washing it down with a can of root beer. Shadow lay in bed, thinking, This is my first bed as a free man, and the thought gave him less pleasure than he had imagined that it would. He left the drapes open, watched the lights of the cars and of the fast food joints through the window glass, comforted to know there was another world out there, one he could walk to anytime he wanted."

"“How was the funeral?” he asked. “It’s over,” said Shadow. “You want to talk about it?” “No,” said Shadow. “Good.” Wednesday grinned. “Too much talking these days. Talk talk talk. This country would get along much better if people learned how to suffer in silence.”"

"There was a thin young woman behind the counter at the Motel America. She told Shadow he had already been checked in by his friend, and gave him his rectangular plastic room key. She had pale blonde hair and a rodentlike quality to her face that was most apparent when she looked suspicious, and eased when she smiled."

"So what are you? A two-bit con artist?" Wednesday nodded. "Yes," he said. "I suppose I am. Among other things."

""I don't like you, Mister Wednesday, or whatever your real name may be. We are not friends. I don't know how you got off that plane without me seeing you, or how you trailed me here. But I'm impressed. You have class. And I'm at a loose end right now. You should know that when we're done, I'll be gone. And if you piss me off, I'll be gone too. Until then, I'll work for you." Wednesday grinned. His smiles were strange things, Shadow decided. They contained no shred of humor, no happiness, no mirth. Wednesday looked like he had learned to smile from a manual. "Very good," he said. "Then we have a compact. And we are agreed." "What the hell," said Shadow."

""He’s hustling you,” said Mad Sweeney, rubbing his bristly ginger beard. “He’s a hustler.” “Damn straight I’m a hustler,” said Wednesday. “That’s why I need someone to look out for my best interests.”"

"You work for me now. You protect me. You transport me from place to place. You run errands. In an emergency, but only in an emergency, you hurt people who need to be hurt. In the unlikely event of my death, you will hold my vigil. And in return I shall make sure that your needs are adequately taken care of."

"Like I said, don't piss off those bitches in the airports," said Johnnie Larch, in the back of his mind, "or they'll haul your sorry ass back here before you can spit"

"If Hell is other people, thought Shadow, then Purgatory is airports."

"There are always places to go further down. Life goes on. And second, if you just hang in there, someday they’re going to have to let you out."

"Shadow shrugged. He could see nothing romantic in a death sentence. If you didn’t have a death sentence, he decided, then prison was, at best, only a temporary reprieve from life, for two reasons. First, life creeps back into prison."

"The best thing - in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing - about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as he could plunge and he'd hit bottom. He didn't worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He did not awake in prison with a feeling of dread; he was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it."

"He sat down on a grassy bank and looked at the city that surrounded him, and thought, one day he would have to go home. And one day he would have to make a home to go back to. He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough."

"One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. The tale is the map that is the territory. You must remember this."

"Shadow shook his head. "You know," he said, "I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don’t need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. It’s what we do.""